Syble Mcdill > Syble's Quotes

“Embedded in their psyche was the story of what had happened to the world, and the boys felt glorious to be on the other side of the madness”
― Pernell Plath Meier, In Our Bones

“Behind every successful woman leader are other successful women leaders that have her back."

- Anonymous”
― Mark Villareal, A Script for Aspiring Women Leaders: 5 Keys to Success

“The mind is an incredibly complex machine, Stuart. Nobody fully understands the workings of it. Everyone has their own perception of the lives they lead and the environment in which they live them. For most of us, the perceptions are complimentary, so we accept reality as a collective experience. For instance, who is to say you see the colour of this t-shirt in the same way I do. We both perceive it as green, but whether or not we see the same colour, we can’t say. It doesn’t matter though as long as we all agree. Nevertheless, if a person comes in and says my t-shirt is red and everyone else says it is green then we have to question his or her perception of my t-shirt. There has to be a reason why their perception is different to ours. Of course, in that case, we would suspect colour blindness, a condition in which the receptors in the eye send erroneous signals to the brain. For whatever reason, Stuart, we are all seeing green, but you see red. We need to find out what is causing your brain to do that.”
― D.S. Smith, Unparalleled

“He couldn’t see her face of course but he knew she was smiling.”
― Dalton Trumbo

“It [being very rich] used to worry me, and I thought it wrong to have so many beautiful things when others had nothing. Now I realize that it is possible for the rich to sin by coveting the privileges of the poor. The poor have always been the favourites of God and his saints, but I believe that is is one of the special achievements of Grace to sanctify the whole of life, riches included.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

“Sitting cross-legged on the rug, puffing on a pipe, wearing a fat gold Rolex on his wrist, Khamenei asked the colonel, “If we were to release all of you now, without any conditions, how long would it be before you could begin to supply us again with spare parts for our military forces?”
― Mark Bowden, Guests of the Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis: The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam

“If I stay. If I live. It’s up to me.

All this business about medically induced comas is just doctor talk. It’s not up to the doctors. It’s not up to the absentee angels. It’s not even up to God who, if He exists, is nowhere around right now. It’s up to me.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“I have never been back to the Ozarks. All I have left are my dreams and memories, but if God is willing, some day I’d like to go back—back to those beautiful hills. I’d like to walk again on trails I walked in my boyhood days. Once again I’d like to face a mountain breeze and smell the wonderful scent of the redbuds, and papaws, and the dogwoods. With my hands I’d like to caress the cool white bark of a sycamore. I’d like to take a walk far back in the flinty hills and search for a souvenir, an old double-bitted ax stuck deep in the side of a white oak tree. I know the handle has long since rotted away with time. Perhaps the rusty frame of a coal-oil lantern still hangs there on the blade. I’d like to see the old home place, the barn and the rail fences. I’d like to pause under the beautiful red oaks where my sisters and I played in our childhood. I’d like to walk up the hillside to the graves of my dogs. I’m sure the red fern has grown and has completely covered the two little mounds. I know it is still there, hiding its secret beneath those long, red leaves, but it wouldn’t be hidden from me for part of my life is buried there, too. Yes, I know it is still there, for in my heart I believe the legend of the sacred red fern.”
― Wilson Rawls, Where the Red Fern Grows

“It is hard to go on living without some hope of encountering the extraordinary.”
― Harold Bloom

“Life is hard, deal with it. Working sucks, deal with it.”
― James Frey, The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

“I am seldom otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death... . I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter--the Eternity they have entered--where life is boundless in its duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fulness.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“CAMPBELL: Read myths. They teach you that you can turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols. Read other people’s myths, not those of your own religion, because you tend to interpret your own religion in terms of facts—but if you read the other ones, you begin to get the message. Myth helps you to put your mind in touch with this experience of being alive. It tells you what the experience is. Marriage, for example. What is marriage? The myth tells you what it is. It’s the reunion of the separated duad. Originally you were one. You are now two in the world, but the recognition of the spiritual identity is what marriage is. It’s different from a love affair. It has nothing to do with that. It’s another mythological plane of experience. When people get married because they think it’s a long-time love affair, they’ll be divorced very soon, because all love affairs end in disappointment. But marriage is recognition of a spiritual identity. If we live a proper life, if our minds are on the right qualities in regarding the person of the opposite sex, we will find our proper male or female counterpart. But if we are distracted by certain sensuous interests, we’ll marry the wrong person. By marrying the right person, we”
― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

“Books are living things and their task lies in their vows of silence. You touch them as they quiver with divine pleasure. You read them and they fall asleep to happy dreams for the next ten years. If you do them the favor of understanding them, of taking in their portions of grief and wisdom, then they settle down in contented residence in your heart.”
― Pat Conroy, My Reading Life

“But the thing that . . . that I touched . . . " I cried. "It was furry! It-" I stopped short, taken with a shudder. "I know," said Herrick.”
― Margery Williams

“It was strange, how easily and quickly protection could cause destruction. Sometimes, Vasher wondered if the two weren't really the same thing. Protect a flower, destroy pests who wanted to feed on it. Protect a building, destroy the plants that could have grown in the soil. Protect a man. Live with the destruction he creates.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Warbreaker

“Eragon.

Is that all you say?

Yes.”
― Christopher Paolini, Eragon

“Once you educate the boys, they tend to leave the villages and go search for work in the cities, but the girls stay home, become leaders in the community, and pass on what they’ve learned. If you really want to change a culture, to empower women, improve basic hygiene and health care, and fight high rates of infant mortality, the answer is to educate girls.”
― Greg Mortenson, Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time

“Of a hundred and fifty doctors in the city, sixty-five were already dead and most of the rest were wounded. Of 1,780 nurses, 1,654 were dead or too badly hurt to work. In the biggest hospital, that of the Red Cross, only six doctors out of thirty were able to function, and only ten nurses out of more than two hundred.”
― John Hersey, Hiroshima

“A necessary monster.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Imaginary Beings

“It's the first line in your book. I always thought there was a lot of truth in that. Or maybe that's what my English teacher said. I can't really remember. I read it last semester."

- Your parents must be so proud you can read."

- They are. They bought me a pony and everything when I did a book report on Cat in the Hat.”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Last Song

“Then, like magic, it seemed like the universe provided a solution. And I thought—okay, this is how. This will work. There’s hope—light at the end of the tunnel. A silver lining, you know?” Roy shook his head. “Fuck. I was so stupid. I was too proud to realize that there was no way it could ever happen. That there couldn’t be a happy ending for us. It was just a set-up. You see, the universe still had accounts to settle. And Susie and I, we were way overdrawn.”
― J.K. Franko, Tooth for Tooth

“My ancestor acquired this power when he came mysteriously to this world. A potent ability to do anything. He was a moral man, perhaps borne out of experience and so he passed down the power stripped of its ability to kill. I had never desired to kill so this limitation did not bother me.”
― Aaron D. Key, Damon Ich

“Truthfully, Professor Hawking? Why would we allow tourists from the future muck up the past when your contemporaries had the task well in Hand?"
Brigadier General Patrick E Buckwalder 2241C.E.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Paradox Effect: Time Travel and Purified DNA Merge to Halt the Collapse of Human Existence

“Happiness and confidence are linked. When you want to feel happier and live a more empowered life, you must build confidence.”
― Robert Gill Jr., Happiness Power: How to Unleash Your Power and Live a More Joyful Life

“Bad news does not get better with time.”
― Mark Villareal, Shortcuts Get You Lost: A Leadership Fable on the Dangers of the Blind Leading the Blind

“When we’re constantly stuck in our screens, we’re missing out on what’s happening around us and within us.”
― Art Rios, Let's Talk: ...About Making Your Life Exciting, Easier, And Exceptional

“#metooasachild”
― Aimee Cabo Nikolov, Love is the Answer, God is the Cure: A True Story of Abuse, Betrayal and Unconditional Love

“She gripped the wheel and squared her shoulders. She didn’t have to do any of this alone. All she had to do was notify the society and put out an All Points Bulletin on Adam and she’d know everything there was to know about the man within 24 hours.”
― Kirsten Fullmer

“Then something in me heard the stars, the pawpaws, trilliums, the whippoorwills, crawdads swimming in the creeks and cousin Alma all calling. Like the air had shimmered them.”
― G.M. Monks, Iola O

“She’d worn anxiety like a thick robe for so long that it was hard for her to take it off.”
― Pernell Plath Meier, In Our Bones