fRaNCes > fRaNCes's Quotes

“Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny.”
― Aristotle

“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.”
― Jack Kerouac

“Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different.”
― Oprah Winfrey

“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“There was no despondency when she fell asleep that night; nor was there hope when she awoke in the morning.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“I didn't answer. Just shook my head and let the tears roll.
"I just want it to go away. I just want all the drama to stop. Nobody would believe me anyway," I whispered. "Nobody would care.”
― Jennifer Brown, Hate List

“Sometimes...you can cry until there's nothing wet in you. You can scream and curse to where your throat rebels and ruptures. You can pray, all you want, to whatever god you think will listen. And, still it makes no difference. It goes on, with no sign as to when it might release you. And you know that if it ever did relent...it would not be because it cared.”
― Jhonen Vasquez, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut

“What you must understand about me is that I’m a deeply unhappy person.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“How can you blame a person for his fears and weaknesses unless you have felt the same and done differently?”
― Amy Tan, The Kitchen God's Wife

“I learned to make things not matter, to put a seal on my hopes and place them on a high shelf, out of reach. And by telling myself that there was nothing inside those hopes anyway, I avoided the wounds of deep disappointment. The pain was no worse than the quick sting of a booster shot. And yet thinking about this makes me ache again. How is it that as a child I knew I should have been loved more? Is everyone born with a bottomless emotional resevoir? ”
― Amy Tan, The Hundred Secret Senses

“Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think that yours is the only path.”
― Paulo Coelho

“I couldn’t see the point of getting up. I had nothing to look forward to.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Once I could see Mom for who she was, and not the mother she had failed to be, I'd be able to forgive her. She was her own person, not just my mother, and it was this person I was forging a relationship with.”
― Rachel Sontag

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

“All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“He possessed the logic of all good intentions and a knowledge of all the tricks of his trade, and yet he never succeeded at anything, because he believed too much in the impossible. Surprising? Why so? He was forever in the act of conceiving it!”
― Charles Baudelaire

“In 1921, a New York rabbi asked Einstein if he believed in God. "I believe in Spinoza's God," he answered, "who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.”
― Jim Holt, Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“We choose our next world through what we learn in this one. Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this one, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome.”
― Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

“I am thrilled to be alive at time when humanity is pushing against the limits of understanding. Even better, we may eventually discover that there are no limits.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“1. Be Impeccable With Your Word
Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

2. Don't Take Anything Personally
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.

3. Don't Make Assumptions
Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

4. Always Do Your Best
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.”
― Don Miguel Ruiz

“My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.”
― Albert Einstein

“No reflection was to be allowed now, not one glance was to be cast back; not even one forward. Not one thought was to be given either to the past or the future. The first was a page so heavenly sweet, so deadly sad, that to read one line of it would dissolve my courage and break down my energy. The last was an awful blank, something like then world when the deluge was gone by.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I'm falling apart, one part after another. Falling down on the world like snow. Half of me is already on the ground, watching from below.”
― Ashly Lorenzana

“I am no fun at all. In fact, I am anti-fun. Not as in anti-violence, but as in anti-matter. I am not so much against fun - although I suppose I kind of am - as I am the opposite of fun. I suck the fun out of a room. Or perhaps I'm just a different kind of fun; the kind that leaves on bereft of hope; the kind of fun that ends in tears.”
― David Rakoff, Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems

“That sun, that light had faded, and she had faded with them. Now she was as grey as the season itself.”
― Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac

“There are far too many silent sufferers.  Not because they don't yearn to reach out, but because they've tried and found no one who cares.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year