Famous Quotes & Sayings

Anton Chekhov

Death is terrifying, but it would be even more terrifying to find out that you are going to live forever and never die.

Anton Chekhov

For the salvation of his soul the Muslim digs a well. It would be a fine thing if each of us were to leave behind a school, or a well, or something of the sort, so that life would not pass by and retreat into eternity without a trace.

Anton Chekhov

I long to embrace, to include in my own short life, all that is accessible to man. I long to speak, to read, to wield a hammer in a great factory, to keep watch at sea, to plow. I want to be walking along the Nevsky Prospect, or in the open fields, or on the ocean - wherever my imagination ranges.

Anton Chekhov

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Belinda Carlisle

Life's too short to be a Go-Go for twenty years.

bell hooks

It's interesting--the way in which one has to balance life--because you have to know when to let go and when to pull back.... There's always some liminal (as opposed to subliminal) space in between which is harder to inhabit because it never feels as safe as moving from one extreme to another.

bell hooks

...move from emphasis on personal lifestyle issues toward creating political paradigms and radical models of social change that emphasize collective as well as individual change.

bell hooks

All my life I have longed to have a loving relationship that would last a lifetime.

bell hooks

Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.

Baltasar Gracian

It is impossible to live without brains, either one's own or borrowed.

Austin Farrer

'Knowledge, without common sense,' says Lee, is 'folly; without method, it is waste; without kindness, it is fanaticism; without religion, it is death.' But with common sense, it is wisdom with method, it is power; with charity, it is beneficence; with religion, it is virtue, and life, and peace.

Arundhati Roy

The only dream worth having, I told her, is to dream that you will live while you're alive and die only when you're dead.

Arundhati Roy

It is after all so easy to shatter a story. To break a chain of thought. To ruin a fragment of a dream being carried around carefully like a piece of porcelain. To let it be, to travel with it, as Velutha did, is much the harder thing to do.

Arundhati Roy

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.

Arianna Huffington

Life is shaped from the inside out.

Arianna Huffington

Life is a dance between making it happen and letting it happen.

Anthony Trollope

Success is the necessary misfortune of life, but it is only to the very unfortunate that it comes early.

Anthony Trollope

I cannot hold with those who want to put down the insignificant chatter of the world

Anthony Trollope

Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who holds a low opinion of himself.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

After death something new begins, over which all powers of the world of death have no more might.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Only those who put tomorrow completely into God's hand and receive fully today what they need for their lives are really secure.

Diana Ross

Do you know where you going to? Do you like the things that life is showing you? Where are you going to? Do you know?

Diane Arbus

My favorite thing is to go where I've never been.

Diane Arbus

Regardless of how you feel inside, always try to look like a winner. Even if you are behind, a sustained look of control and confidence can give you a mental edge that results in victory.

Diana Wynne Jones

Learn to drive?" "Never," said Quentin. "My mission in life is to be a passenger.

Diane Ackerman

Life is a thing that mutates without warning, not always in enviable ways. All part of the improbable adventure of being alive, of being a brainy biped with giant dreams on a crazy blue planet.

Diane Ackerman

Libraries change lives. They are the soul of a people.

Diane Ackerman

I don't want to be a passenger in my own life.

Diane Ackerman

It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.

Derrick Jensen

If we celebrate life with all its contradictions, embrace, experience, and ultimately live with it, a chance exists for a spiritual life filled not only with pain and untidiness, but also with joy, community, and creativity.

Derrick Bell

Black people are the magical faces at the bottom of society's well. Even the poorest whites, those who must live their lives only a few levels above, gain their self-esteem by gazing down on us. Surely, they must know that their deliverance depends on letting down their ropes. Only by working together is escape possible. Over time, many reach out, but most simply watch, mesmerized into maintaining their unspoken commitment to keeping us where we are, at whatever cost to them or to us (Bell).

Desiderius Erasmus

As an example of just how useless these philosophers are for any practice in life there is Socrates himself, the one and only wise man, according to the Delphic Oracle. Whenever he tried to do anything in public he had to break off amid general laughter. While he was philosophizing about clouds and ideas, measuring a flea's foot and marveling at a midge's humming, he learned nothing about the affairs of ordinary life.