Meditations

This mortal life is a little thing, lived in a little corner of the earth. 

~Marcus Aurelius

Meditations

And the moral of it all? This. You embark; you make the voyage; you reach port: step ashore, then. 

~Marcus Aurelius

Women of Troy

Hecuba: Funerals are for the living, an empty show to impress their friends. 

~Euripides 

The Odyssey

When Dawn spread out her finger tips of rose...

~Homer

The Republic

"For if men are sensible and good-tempered, old age is easy enough to bear: if not, youth as well as old age is a burden."

~Plato, said by character Cephalus 

On Dumpster Diving

The things I find in Dumpsters, the love letters and the ragdolls of so many lives, remind me of this lesson. Now I hardly pick up a thing without envisioning the time I will cast it away. This I think is a healthy state of mind. Almost everything I have now has already been cast out at least once, proving that what I own is valueless to someone. 

~Lars Eighner

Yes Please

I believe great people do things before they are ready. 

~Amy Poehler

History of the Peloponnesian War

My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last for ever. 

~Thucydides

Days We Have Seen

'Quo Vadis?' I asked myself, "Where are you going?" The answer was that I was following my heart; that I felt there was a 'rightness' about what I was doing that was unshakeable. 

~Peter Moore

The Count of Monte Cristo

It was a lovely starlight night--they had just reached the top of the hill Villejuif, the platform from whence Paris, like some dark sea, is seen to agitate its millions of lights, resembling phosphoric waves,--waves indeed, more noisy, more passionate, more changeable, more furious, more greedy, than those of the tempestuous ocean,--waves which never lie calm, like those of the vast sea,--waves ever destructive, ever foaming, and ever restless. 

~Alexandre Dumas

The Colossus of New York

Disappear into a crowd. It's right there in the city charter: we have the right to disappear. The city rushes to hide all traces. It's the law. 

~Colson Whitehead

The Colossus of New York

Do not tire. Do not falter. Listen up because I'm only going to say this once: We need all our monuments, no matter what size, carved stone or mortal clay. Do not doubt you inspire with every breath, that every breath is a marvel of engineering. Deserve everything. 

~Colson Whitehead

The Colossus of New York

The background says it all: against that skyline we are as brief as a camera flash. Blinded for seconds. But then it returns. That jaw at the foot of the island and its hungry teeth. 

~Colson Whitehead 

Why We Broke Up

In the bathroom mirror there was even a smudge of dirt on my neck, and I wiped it off in a hurried flush, the cheap paper towel so rough against my skin that I looked for a scrape in my reflection and then, meeting my own eyes, stood for a sec and tried to figure, like all girls in all mirrors everywhere, the difference between lover and slut. 

~Daniel Handler

Essays in Idleness

Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom, the moon only when it is cloudless? To long for the moon while looking on the rain, to lower the blinds and be unaware of the passing of spring-- these are even more deeply moving. Branches about to bloom or gardens strewn with faded flowers are worthier of our admiration--in all things, it is the beginnings and endings that are interesting...If man were never to die away but lingered on forever in the world, how things would lose their power to move us. The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty.

~Yoshida Kenko

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood

Nothing's worse than saying goodbye. It's a little like dying. 

~Marjane Satrapi

Invisible Man

There's a stench in the air, which, from this distance underground, might be the smell either of death or of spring--I hope of spring. But don't let me trick you, there is a death in the smell of spring and in the smell of thee as in the smell of me. 

Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?

~Ralph Ellison

Invisible Man

For history records the patterns of men's lives, they say: Who slept with whom and with what results; who fought and who won and who lived to lie about it afterward. 

~Ralph Ellison

Invisible Man

Above the decorous walking around me, sounds of footsteps leaving the verandas of far-flung buildings and moving toward the walks and over the walks to the asphalt drives lined with whitewashed stones, those cryptic messages for men and women, boys and girls heading quietly toward where the visitors waited, and we moving not in the mood of worship but of judgement. 

~Ralph Ellison

Savages

We're just animals still learning how to crawl...

All the hate coming out from a generation who got everything and nothing guided by temptation. 

~Marina and The Diamonds

--

I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We've been taught that silence would save us, but it won't.

~Audre Lorde

The Count of Monte Cristo

For some temperaments work is a remedy for all afflictions.

~Alexandre Dumas

Hamlet

King: My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

~William Shakespeare

I'm Nobody! Who Are You?

I'm Nobody! Who are you?

Are you - Nobody - too?

Then there's a pair of us! 

Don't tell! they'd banish us - you know! 

How dreary - to be - Somebody! 

~Emily Dickinson 

Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

Molly Mahoney: Are you dying? 

Mr. Magorium: Light bulbs die, my sweet. I will depart. 

~Natalie Portman & Dustin Hoffman

The Count of Monte Cristo

Then he raised his eyes towards the ceiling, but withdrew them immediately, as if he feared the roof would open and reveal to his distressed view that second tribunal called heaven, and that other judge named God. 

~Alexandre Dumas

The Count of Monte Cristo

It is impossible to form any idea of it, without having seen it. Suppose all the stars had descended from the sky and mingled in a wild dance on the face of the earth; the whole accompanied by cries that were never heard in any other part of the world. 

~Alexandre Dumas

The Count of Monte Cristo

The moccoletti is like life: man has found but one means of transmitting it, and that one comes from God. But he has discovered a thousand means of taking it away, although the devil has somewhat aided him. 

~Alexandre Dumas

--

"I would rather die standing than live on my knees."

~Stéphane Charbonnier

The Count of Monte Cristo

"To learn is not to know; there are the learners and the learned. Memory makes the one, philosophy the other."

~Alexandre Dumas (said by character Abbé Faria)