Caitlin > Caitlin's Quotes

“Treat all people as if they are real, because who knows, perhaps they are.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Others made me a slave, but I must squeeze the slave out of myself, drop by drop.”
― Anton Chekhov

“Who, I ask you, can take, dare take on himself the rights, the duties, the responsibilities of another human soul?”
― Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Solitude of Self

“It is time for us to keep in mind that it requires more to make and preserve a Republic than the mere absence of a king, and that when a Republic decays its soul is apt to die first, which its outward form may still be lasting.”
― Carl Schurz

“Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the sea fearing man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them, you reach your destiny”
― Carl Schurz

“At first, she was disappointed, but she was patient, infinitely patient, rooted to the ground by the boredom of the days.”
― T.C. Boyle, The Tortilla Curtain

“The aim of life is self-development. To realise one's nature perfectly-that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“He thought of Christ with his cross and his crown of thorns and wondered who had it worse.”
― T.C. Boyle, The Tortilla Curtain

“She didn't read books so she didn't know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time—the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes—when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever—there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“If you care about something you have to protect it – If you’re lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“Your memory is a monster; you forget—it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you—and summons them to your recall with will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“Never confuse faith, or belief—of any kind—with something even remotely intellectual.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“THAT'S WHAT POWERFUL MEN DO TO THIS COUNTRY - IT'S A BEAUTIFUL, SEXY, BREATHLESS COUNTRY, AND POWERFUL MEN USE IT TO TREAT THEMSELVES TO A THRILL! THEY SAY THEY LOVE IT BUT THEY DON'T MEAN IT. THEY SAY THINGS TO MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR GOOD - THEY MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR MORAL...THE COUNTRY WANTS A SAVIOUR. THE COUNTRY IS A SUCKER FOR POWERFUL MEN WHO LOOK GOOD. WE THINK THEY'RE MORALISTS AND THEN THEY JUST USE US.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“She remembered wanting to make a pilgrimage to Gautama in order to see the face of one perfect man, to inhale his peace, but that instead of him, now she had found Siddartha, and it was good, just as good, as having seen the other.”
― Hermann Hesse, Sidhartha

“I want to take my rightful share of life by force, I want to give lavishly, I want love to flow from my heart, to ripen and bear fruit. There are many horizons that must be visited, fruit that must be plucked, books read, and white pages in the scrolls of life to be inscribed with vivid sentences in a bold hand.”
― Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North

“Perhaps memory is not merely the preservation of a moment in the mind, but the process of repeatedly returning to it, carefully breaking it up in parts and assembling them again until we can make sense of what we remember.”
― Laila Lalami, The Other Americans