Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.
Jealousy can open the blood, it can make black roses.
Go out and do something. It isn’t your room that’s a prison, it’s yourself.
That is salvation. To give of love inside. To keep love of life, no matter what, and give to others. Generously.
I have never found anybody who could stand to accept the daily demonstrative love I feel in me, and give back as good as I give.
Happy! That is indefinable as far as states of being go.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter - - - for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. . . . Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
What a lost person needs is a map of the territory, with his own position marked on it so he can see where he is in relation to everything else. Literature is not only a mirror; it is also a map, a geography of the mind. Our literature is one such map, if we can learn to read it as our literature, as the product of who and where we have been. We need such a map desperately, we need to know about here, because here is where we live. For the members of a country or a culture, shared knowledge of their place, their here, is not a luxury but a necessity. Without that knowledge we will not survive.
Switch-hitting is one of the greatest things in the world and one of the worst things in the world.
Do you understand how there could be any writing in a spider's web?" "Oh, no," said Dr. Dorian. "I don't understand it. But for that matter I don't understand how a spider learned to spin a web in the first place. When the words appeared, everyone said they were a miracle. But nobody pointed out that the web itself is a miracle. " "What's miraculous about a spider's web?" said Mrs. Arable. "I don't see why you say a web is a miracle-it's just a web. " "Ever try to spin one?" asked Dr. Dorian.
There was no word in the dictionary adequate to describe the sensation other than sensational.