bell > bell's Quotes

“Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”
― Robert Frost

“Some people could look at a mud puddle and see an ocean with ships.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“She didn't read books so she didn't know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“...she starched and ironed her face, forming it into just what people wanted to see...”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”
― Stephen King

“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.”
― Frank Herbert

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Do not cry over losing blood. Not for something you love.”
― Mitch Albom, The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto

“A man doesn’t need to fly to the sun, he need only find a patch of clean earth, and crawl there, and let the sun shine on him.”
― Franz Kafka, Letter to My Father

“You are free and that is why you are lost.”
― Franz Kafka, Letter to His Father

“Not every child has the endurance and fearlessness to go on searching until it comes to the kindliness that lies beneath the surface. You can only treat a child in the way you yourself are constituted.”
― Franz Kafka, Letter to His Father

“It is a long dark road from there to where I have really come”
― Franz Kafka, Letter to His Father

“We never love anyone. What we love is the idea we have of someone. It's our own concept—our own selves—that we love.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“I feel as if I'm always on the verge of waking up.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“We worship perfection because we can't have it; if we had it, we would reject it. Perfection is inhuman, because humanity is imperfect.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“I’ve dreamed a lot. I’m tired now from dreaming but not tired of dreaming. No one tires of dreaming, because to dream is to forget, and forgetting does not weigh on us, it is a dreamless sleep throughout which we remain awake. In dreams I have achieved everything.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“Then listen to me,' he said and cleared his throat. 'It's true that a child belongs to its father. But when a father beats his child, it seeks sympathy in its mother's hut. A man belongs to his fatherland when things are good and life is sweet. But when there is sorrow and bitterness he finds refuge in his motherland. Your mother is there to protect you. She is buried there. And that is why we say that mother is supreme. Is it right that you, Okonkwo, should bring your mother a heavy face and refuse to be comforted? Be careful or you may displease the dead. Your duty is to comfort your wives and children and take them back to your fatherland after seven years. But if you allow sorrow to weigh you down and kill you, they will all die in exile.”
― Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

“Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered. As the elders said, if a child washed his hands he could eat with kings.”
― Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

“Do not despair. I know you will not despair. You have a manly and a proud heart. A proud heart can survive a general failure because such a failure does not prick its pride. It is more difficult and more bitter when a man fails alone.”
― Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

“Until the lion learns how to write, every story will glorify the hunter.”
― J. Nozipo Maraire

“Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”
― Chinua Achebe (Author)

“Yours

(now I'm even losing my name - it was getting shorter and shorter all the time and is now: Yours)”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“In a way, you are poetry material; You are full of cloudy subtleties I am willing to spend a lifetime figuring out. Words burst in your essence and you carry their dust in the pores of your ethereal individuality.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“Written kisses don't reach their destination, rather they are drunk on the way by the ghosts.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena