| Quotes II |
| You know when you are reading a book and something just catches you? You stare at it in amazement because somehow, that author knows exactly how you feel. You read back over that certain section a couple of times, and each time it just freaks you out even more because somewhere, sometime, you've felt exactly that way. Or it's just a quote that makes you cry, and you never cry when you read a book. You dog-ear the page so that you can come back to it later. Maybe you read it to someone because you just have to share it. Okay, maybe that's just me. Anyhow, these are the quotes that have made me pause a second to ponder life. Some of them come from the most unlikely books, but nevertheless, they describe something about me or are simply profound. Enjoy 'em. I'll build on this page as I acquire more quotes. |
| from Uncle Tom's Cabin ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe |
| "O, ye who visit the distressed, do ye know that everything your money can buy, given with a cold, averted face, is not worth one honest tear shed in real sympathy?" |
| "There are in this world blessed souls, whose sorrows all spring into joys for others; whose earthly hopes, laid in the grave with many tears, are the seed from which spring healing flowers and balm for the desolate and the distressed." |
| "Of course, in a novel, people's hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us. There is a most busy and important round of eating, drinking, dressing, walking, visiting, buying, selling, talking, reading and all that makes up what is commonly called living, yet to be gone through." |
| "Religion!" said St. Clare in a tone that made both ladies look at him. "Religion! Is what you hear at church religion? Is that which can bend and turn, and descend and ascend, to fit every crooked phase of selfish, worldly society, religion? Is that religion which is less scrupulous, less generous, less just, less considerate for man, than even my own ungodly, unworldly, blinded nature? No! When I look for a religion, I must look for something above me, and not something beneath." Note: St. Clare is responding to the absurd use of religion in the justification of slavery. |
| "Is God on their side?" said George, speaking less to his wife than pouring out his own bitter thoughts. "Does He see all they do? Why does He let such things happen? And they tell us that the Bible is on their side; certainly all the power is. They are rich, and healthy, and happy; they are members of churches, expecting to go to heaven; and they get along so easy in the world, and have it all their own way; and poor, honest, faithful Christians,--Christians as good or better than they,--are lying in the very dust under their feet. They buy 'em, and sell 'em, and make trade of their heart's blood, and groans and tears,--and God lets them." |
| "Life passes, with us all, a day at a time; so it passed with our friend Tom, till two years were gone. Though parted from all his soul held dear, and though often yearning for what lay beyond, still was he never positively and consciously miserable; for, so well is the harp of human feeling strung, that nothing but a crash that breaks every string can wholly mar its harmony; and, on looking back to seasons which in review appear to us as those of deprivation and trial, we can remember that each hour, as it glided, brought its diversions and alleviations, so that though not happy wholly, we were not, either, wholly miserable." |
| "Still waters run deepest, they used to tell me," said Miss Ophelia oracularly. |
| "Week after week glided away in the St. Clare mansion, and the waves of life settled back to their usual flow, where that little bark had gone down. For how imperiously, how coolly, in disregard of all one's feeling, does the hard, cold, uninteresting course of daily realities move on! Still we must eat, and drink, and sleep, and wake again,--still bargain, buy, sell, ask and answer questions,--pursue, in short, a thousand shadows, though all interest in them be over; the cold mechanical habit of living remaining, after all vital interest in it has fled." |
| "Any mind that is capable of real sorrow is capable of good." |
| "Because now is the only time there ever is to do a thing in," said Miss Ophelia. |
| "It is a beautiful belief, That ever round our head Are hovering, on angel wings, The spirits of the dead." |
| "Their night was now far spent, and the morning star of liberty rose fair before them. Liberty!--electric word! What is it? Is there anything more in it than a name-a rhetorical flourish? Why, men and women of America, does your heart's blood thrill at that word, for which your fathers bled, and your braver mothers were willing that their noblest and best should die? "Is there anything in it glorious and dear for a nation, that is not also glorious and dear for a man? What is freedom to a nation, but freedom to the individuals in it? What is freedom to that young man, who sits there, with his arms folded over his broad chest, the tint of African blood in his cheek, its dark fires in his eye,--what is freedom to George Harris? To your fathers, freedom was the right of a nation to be a nation. To him, it is the right of a man to be a man, and not a brute; the right to call the wife of his bosom his wife, and to protect her from lawless violence; the right to protect and educate his child; the right to have a home of his own, a religion of his own, a character of his own, unsubject to the will of another." |
| from On Mystic Lake ~ Kristin Hannah |
| "Love took time and effort. It was a million tiny moments stacked atop one another to make something tangible." "People left, and if you loved too deeply, too fiercely, their swift and sudden absence could chill you to the soul." "She didn't even know if there was an I inside of her anymore." "'I didn't know how much it hurt...It feels like...' 'Like your insides are bleeding away...like nothing will ever make you happy again.'" "My heart! I want it back in one piece!" "Kathy's death had reminded her how precious time was, how fleeting. How sometimes life snipped the edges off your good intentions and left you with no second chance to say what really mattered." "She grieved most of all for the loss of her childhood innocence, which had been taken on a rainy day without warning, leaving behind an adult in a child's body, a girl who knew that life was unfair and love could break your heart, that nothing was worse than being left behind by the one you loved." "If only there was some internal mechanism that pointed unerringly to the true north of ourselves." "Once, she had taken love for granted. Never again. Love was the sun and the moon and the stars in a world that was otherwise cold and dark." "Dreams. They were such precious commodities." "Nothing was easier to shatter than the fragile shield of an idealist." "I thought you grieved for a few respectable months and then got on with your life. I didn't know how...deep love ran, how it was in your blood, not your heart, and how that same blood pumped through your veins your whole life." "I never knew it could be this way...that love could catch you when you fell." "GONE. Such a hard, cold, uncompromising word." But now she knew that life without risk was impossible, and if by chance you stumbled across a safe, serene existence, it was because you'd never really reached for anything in the first place." "The rain," he said softly, "It's angel's tears. And every glass you've ever seen is half full. Don't let yourself forget that." "Love can rise above tragedy and give us a way home." |