Edwin A. Robinson Quotes
“Would God foresee such folly alive as that / In any thing he had made, and still make more? / If so, his ways are darker than divines / Have drawn them for our best bewilderments.” – Edwin A. Robinson, Tristram

“This thing has come / For us, and you are not to see the end / Through any such fog of honor and self-hate / As you may seek to throw around yourself / For being yourself. Had you been someone else, / You might have been one like your cousin Andred, / Who looks at me as if he were a snake / That has heard something. Had you been someone else, / You might have been like Mordred, or like Mark. / God—you like Mark! You might have been a slave. / We cannot say what either of us had been / Had we been something else.” – Edwin A. Robinson, Tristram

“There must be women who are made for love, / And of it, and are mostly pride and fire / Without it. There would not be much else left / Of them without it than sold animals / That might as well be driven and eating grass / As weaving, riding, hunting, and being queens, / Or not being queens.” – Edwin A. Robinson, Tristram

“One may be wise enough, not having all, / Still to be found among the fortunate.” – Edwin A. Robinson, Tristram

Random Quotes
“Well, if it isn't Nora five minutes after the end of ‘A Doll's House.’” - Christopher Durang, Baby with the Bathwater

“Michael [Ventris’s] extraordinary flair for learning languages began at the age of six when he taught himself Polish. Soon he picked up French, German, and the Swiss-German dialect while at school in Switzerland; later he added Russian, Swedish, Italian, and other European languages, in addition to a good grasp of classical Greek and Latin. It became a matter of pride to him to pick up languages in a matter of weeks.” – Andrew Robinson, Lost Languages

“You will still be here tomorrow, / But your dreams may not.” – Cat Stevens, “Father and Son”

“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.” – Thomas Paine

“But if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day, and cry all ‘We died at such at place,’ some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle, for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it.” – William Shakespeare, Henry V

“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.” – D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover

“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.” – J.R.R. Tolkein, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

“I said I should be a very unhappy creature if I could not bear my own company.” – Samuel Richardson, Clarissa

“If I would treat her as flesh and blood, I should find her such. They thought that I knew, if any living man did, that to make a goddess of a woman, she would assume the goddess; to give her power, she would act up to it to the giver, if to nobody else...” – Samuel Richardson, Clarissa

"When I found I could speak Navajo at the age of 12," Hale said, "I used to go out every day and sit on a rock and talk Navajo to myself." - in a New York Time article by William Honan

Children's Book Quotes
“Time for my cake, for my cake and milk, time for my milk and cake.” – Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy

“I think maybe they’re all right when they say there are some things I won’t know anything about until I’m older. But if [love] makes you like to eat all kinds of wurst I’m not sure I’m going to like this.” – Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy

“Gone is gone. I never miss anything or anyone because it all becomes a lovely memory. I guard my memories and love them, but I don’t get in them and lie down.” – Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy

George Eliot Quotes
“But there was nothing of an ascetic’s expression in her bright full eyes, as she looked before her, not consciously seeing, but absorbing into the intensity of her mood, the solemn glory of the afternoon with its long swathes of light between the far-off rows of limes, whose shadows touched each other.” – George Eliot, Middlemarch

“I was too indolent, you know: else I might have been anywhere at one time.” – George Eliot, Middlemarch

“Mr. Will Ladislaw’s sense of the ludicrous lit up his features very agreeably: it was the pure enjoyment of comicality, and had no mixture of sneering and self-exaltation.” – George Eliot, Middlemarch

“But Lydgate was less ripe, and might possibly have experience before him which would modify his opinion as to the most excellent things in women.” – George Eliot, Middlemarch

“Destiny stands by sarcastic with our dramatis personae folded in her hand.” – George Eliot, Middlemarch

“...a few personages or families that stood with rocky firmness amid all this fluctuation, were slowly presenting new aspects in spite of solidity, and altering with the double change of self and beholder.” - George Eliot, Middlemarch

“There are characters which are continually creating collisions and nodes for themselves in dramas which nobody is prepared to act with them. Their susceptibilities will clash against objects that remain innocently quiet.” – George Eliot, Middlemarch

“With his taper stuck before him [Casaubon] forgot the absence of windows, and in bitter manuscript remarks on other men’s notions about the solar deities, he had become indifferent to the sunlight.” – George Eliot, Middlemarch

“How will you know the pitch of that great bell / Too large for you to stir? Let but a flute / Play ‘neath the fine-mixed metal: listen close / Till the right note flows forth, a silvery rill: / Then shall the huge bell tremble – then the mass / With myriad waves concurrent shall respond / In low soft unison.” – George Eliot, Middlemarch

“But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.” – George Eliot, Middlemarch

“Their young delight in speaking to each other, and saying what no one else would care to hear, was forever ended, and become a treasure of the past.” – George Eliot, Middlemarch

Quotes from the Jesuits / retreats
“There will only be one of you for all time. Fearlessly be yourself.” – Kairos

“Men and/or women for others (MOWFO).” – Brebeuf Jesuit

“Live the fourth.” – Kairos

“Doubt the first, dance the second, cry the third, and live the fourth.” – Kairos

“Both what you run away from—and yearn for—is within you.” – Anthony de Mello SJ

“Doubt and faith: let them grow together.” – Michael Moynahan SJ

Quotes from other Russian authors
“The sheep were asleep. Against the grey background of the dawn, already beginning to cover the eastern part of the sky, the silhouettes of sheep that were not asleep could be seen here and there; they stood with drooping heads, thinking. Their thoughts, tedious and oppressive, called forth by images of nothing but the broad steppe and the sky, the days and the nights, probably weighed upon them themselves, crushing them into apathy; and, standing there as though rooted to the earth, they noticed neither the presence of a stranger nor the uneasiness of the dogs.” – Anton Chekhov, Happiness

“...simply impotence of soul, incapacity for being moved by beauty, premature old age brought on by education, his casual existence, struggling for a livelihood, his homeless life in lodgings.” – Anton Chekhov, Verotchka

“All the movements in the world, taken separately, were sober and deliberate but, taken together, they were all happily drunk with the general flow of life which united and carried them. People worked and struggled, they were driven on by their individual cares and anxieties, but these springs of action would have run down and jammed the mechanism if they had not been kept in check by an over-all feeling of profound unconcern. This feeling came from the comforting awareness of the interwovenness of all human lives, the sense of their flowing into one another, the happy assurance that all that happened in the world took place not only on the earth which buried the dead but also in some other dimension known to some as the Kingdom of God, to others as history and to others by yet some other name.” – Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

“He looked at an aspen shaking from top to bottom, its wet leaves like bits of tinfoil. ‘I’ll order it to stop.’ With an insane intensity of effort, he willed silently with his whole being, with every ounce of his flesh and blood: ‘Be still,’ and the tree at once obediently froze into immobility.” – Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

“Tolstoy says that the more a man devotes himself to beauty the further he moves away from goodness.” – Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

“The idea which underlies this is that communion between mortals is immortal, and that the whole of life is symbolic because the whole of it has meaning.” – Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

“And then, into this tasteless heap of gold and marble, He came, light-footed and clothed in light, with his marked humanity, his deliberate Galilean provincialism, and from that moment there were neither gods nor peoples, there was only man—man the carpenter, man the ploughman, man the shepherd with his flock of sheep at sunset, man whose name does not sound in the least proud but who is sung in lullabies and portrayed in picture galleries the world over.” – Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

Foreign Language Quotes (with translations)
“Non, ce n'était pas du vin : c'était la passion, c'était l'âpre joie et l'angoisse sans fin, et la mort.” - Joseph Bédier, Le roman de Tristan et Iseut
(No, this was not wine: it was passion, it was bitter joy and unending anguish, and death.)

Id quid fuisti et es non cras eris.
(That which you were and are you will not be tomorrow.)

“Je ne regarderai ni l’or du soir qui tombe, / Ni les voiles au loin descendant vers Harfleur.” – Victor Hugo, Demain, dès l’aube
(I will see neither the gold of falling evening, / Nor the faraway sails descending towards Harfleur.)

“Jamais cette tête n’avait été aussi poétique qu’au moment où elle allait tomber.” – Stendhal, Le Rouge et le Noir
(Never had that head been as poetic as at the moment it was going to fall.)

“J’en suis venu à prier dieu, / mais on sait bien qu’il est trop vieux / et qu’il n’est plus maître de rien.” – Jacques Brel, “Sans Exigences”
(I was even moved to pray to God, / but everyone knows that He is too old / and he’s no longer master of anything.)

“Et puis / et puis infiniment, / comme deux corps qui prient - / infiniment lentement / ces deux corps se séparent, / et en se séparant / ces deux corps se déchirent, / et je vous jure qu’ils crient.” - Jacques Brel, “Orly”
(And then / and then infinitely, / like two praying bodies - / infinitely slowly / the two bodies separate, / and in separating / those two bodies are torn, / and I swear they cry out.)

“Moi, je t’offrirai des perles de pluie / venues de pays où il ne pleut pas. / Je creuserai la terre jusqu’après ma mort / pour couvrir ton corps d’or et de lumière. / Je ferai un domaine où l’amour sera roi / où l’amour sera loi, où tu seras reine.” - Jacques Brel, “Ne Me Quitte Pas”
(I will offer you drops of rain / from countries where it doesn’t rain. / I will dig up the earth until after my death / to cover your body with gold and light. / I will form a domain where love will be king, / where love will be law, where you will be queen.)

Lev Tolstoy Quotes
“For Russian historians—strange and terrible to say—Napoleon, that most insignificant tool of history, who never anywhere, even in exile, showed human dignity—Napoleon is the object of adulation and enthusiasm; he is ‘grand.’” -Lev Tolstoy, War and Peace

“In historical events great men—so called—are but the labels that serve to give a name to an event, and like labels, they have the last possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.” – Lev Tolstoy, War and Peace

“Military service always corrupts a man, placing him in conditions of complete idleness, that is, absence of all intelligent and useful work, and liberating him from the common obligations of humanity, for which it substitutes conventional considerations like the honour of the regiment, the uniform and the flag, and, on the one hand, investing him with unlimited power over other men, and, on the other, demanding slavish subjection to superior officers.” – Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection

“And to not one of those present, from the priest and the superintendent down to Maslova, did it occur that this Jesus Whose name the priest repeated in wheezy tones such an endless number of times, praising Him with outlandish words, had expressly forbidden everything that was being done there; that He had not only prohibited the senseless chatter and the blasphemous incantation over the bread and wine but had also, in the most emphatic manner, forbidden men to call other men their master or to pray in temples, and had commanded each to pray in solitude; had forbidden temples themselves, saying that He came to destroy them and that one should worship not in temples but in spirit and in truth; and above everything else He had forbidden not only sitting in judgement on people and imprisoning, humiliating, torturing and executing them, as was done here, but had even prohibited any kind of violence, saying that He came to set at liberty those that were captive.” - Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection

“[The priest] did not believe that the bread became flesh, or that he had really devoured a bit of God – no one could believe that – but he believed that one ought to believe it.” - Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection

“[Nekhlyudov] was always surprised to find that he was supposed to belong to some party and be called a liberal just because he maintained that a man should be heard before he was judged, that all men are equal before the law, that nobody ought to be ill-treated and beaten, especially if they had not been tried and found guilty.” - Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection

“’Yes, yes, she is an entirely different person,’ Nekhlyudov thought, experiencing after all his former doubts a feeling he had never known before – the certainty that love is invincible.” - Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection

“They talked of the injustice of power, of the sufferings of the unfortunate, of the poverty of the people, but in reality their eyes, gazing at each other through the sounds of their conversation, kept asking: ‘Can you love me?’ and answering ‘I can,’ and physical desire, assuming the most unexpected and radiant forms, was drawing them together.” - Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection

“Could it really be that all the talk about justice, goodness, law, religion, God and so on, was nothing but so many words to conceal the grossest self-interest and cruelty?” - Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection

“If once we admit, be it for a single hour or in a single instance, that there can be anything more important than compassion for a fellow human being, then there is no crime against man that we cannot commit with an easy conscience.” - Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection

“To [Nabatov], as to Arago, God was a hypothesis for which, so far, he had had no use.” - Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection

“We live in the absurd conviction that we are masters of our lives, that life is given to us for our enjoyment. But this is obviously absurd. If we have been sent into this world, it must be by someone’s will and for some purpose.” – Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection

John Galsworthy Quotes
“...the God of Property, whose altar is inscribed with those inspiring words: ‘Nothing for nothing, and really remarkably little for sixpence.’” - John Galsworthy, The Man of Property

“...they did not like telling lies, having an impression that only Frenchmen and Russians told them...” – John Galsworthy, The Man of Property

“There are things, he feels—there are things here which—well, which are things.” – John Galsworthy, The Man of Property

“For he himself had experienced to the full the gnawing fear at the bottom of each woman’s heart that she is a drag on the man she loves.” – John Galsworthy, The Man of Property

“The man of the world awoke with a sense of being lost to that world, and a dim recollection of having been called a ‘limit.’” – John Galsworthy, In Chancery

“If she could only have believed that she made him happy, how much happier would the twenty years of their companionship have been!” – John Galsworthy, In Chancery

“And yet still seeing her with the sunlight on the clinging China crêpe of her gown, he uttered a little groan, so that a tourist who was passing, thought: ‘Man in pain! Let’s see! what did I have for lunch?’” – John Galsworthy, In Chancery

“Because of the sound of the word he was passionately addicted to the Austrians, and finding there were so few battles in which they were successful he had to invent them in his games.” – John Galsworthy, Awakening

“...standing on one leg beside the bath, like Slingsby, [he] had whispered—“Ho, ho, ho! Dog my cats!” mysteriously, to bring luck.” – John Galsworthy, Awakening

“Decidedly no man ought to have to die while his heart was still young enough to love beauty!” – John Galsworthy, To Let

“...just before he fell asleep he had been thinking: ‘As a people shall we ever really like the French? Will they ever really like us!’” – John Galsworthy, To Let

“His heart thumped and pained him. Life—its loves—its work—its beauty—its aching, and—its end! A good time; a fine time in spite of all; until—you regretted that you had ever been born. Life—it wore you down, yet did not make you want to die—that was the cunning evil! Mistake to have a heart!” – John Galsworthy, To Let

“...his eyes gave her a funny feeling of having no particular clothes.” – John Galsworthy, To Let

"He might wish and wish and never get it—the beauty and the loving in the world!" – John Galsworthy, To Let

“The impossibility of getting anything serious from this young man afflicted Soames like the eating of heavy pudding.” – John Galsworthy, The White Monkey

“’It’s pretty hard sometimes to remember that it’s all comedy; but one gets there, you know.’” – John Galsworthy, Swan Song

“Something strong in Michael, so strong that he hadn’t known of its existence, had rallied to his aid.” – John Galsworthy, Swan Song

“She had married him for one or other of the unnumbered reasons for which women marry men, any one of which is good enough till after the event.” – John Galsworthy, Jocelyn

“That is a very difficult question, but I think it is like this, don’t you know. One to another of us, has free will; that is, you know, in our social relations. Looked at from the – er – the narrow point of view, there is of course free will, yes – free will, and we make use of it, as we are weak or strong. But...there is quite another point of view, don’t you see, equally true; of course, we are all at the ends of long chains of – er – circumstance. Whatever we do, you know, is only what comes out of that – it is all settled before, so that, of course, in that sense there us no free will. For instance, my dear young lady, if you choose to do something unexpected, it is really the expected thing you are doing all the time, because the chains of your circumstance and your temperament would not permit you to do otherwise. ... What we call morality – I believe in it...Certainly. Why? Because there it is, don’t you know? One can see it, it is quite thick, one can cut it with a knife. Every peoples has its own, and every peoples disobeys it more or less...Ah! it is a little thing, our morality; but there is a big morality, yes, yes, a big morality, over there, don’t you know....Over there!...Everywhere! Yes, yes. Nature is very moral. Ah! she is big, but she is moral. She has to be, you know. Look at that grass, my dear young lady...she can’t play freaks, she has got her place, you know. It is wonderful to think, isn’t it, if that little blade of grass vanished quite away, all the world would come undone. Ah! I think that is wonderful, that is morality.” – John Galsworthy, Jocelyn

“That she was one of those women—not too common in the Anglo–Saxon race—born to be loved and to love, who when not loving are not living, had certainly never even occurred to him.” – John Galsworthy, The Man of Property

Fyodor Dostoevsky Quotes
“My brother, a dying youth, asked the birds to forgive him. That may sound absurd, but when you think of it, it makes sense. For everything is like the ocean, all things flow and are indirectly linked together, and if you push here, something will move at the other end of the world. It may be madness to beg the birds for forgiveness, but things would be easier for the birds, for the child, and for every animal if you were nobler than you are – yes, they would be easier, even if only by a little. Understand that everything is like the ocean. Then, consumed by eternal love, you will pray to the birds, too. In a state of fervor you will pray them to forgive you your sins. And you must treasure that fervor, absurd though it may seem to others.
My friends, pray to God for joy. Be joyful like children, like the birds. Do not be discouraged in your efforts by men’s sins; do not fear that they will obliterate your work and prevent its fulfillment; do not say, ‘Sin, wickedness, and bad environment are too much for us – we are alone and helpless against them, and the surrounding evil will not allow us to accomplish our good works.’ Rid yourselves of that despair, children! There is one way for you to overcome these obstacles: take firm hold of yourselves and make yourselves answerable for all men’s sins. This is also the truth, friends! For as soon as a man sincerely accepts the idea that he is answerable for the sins of all men, he will realize that that is, indeed, the truth, that he is answerable for everybody and everything. But if you seek excuses for your idleness and impotence by blaming other people, you will end up bloated with Satan’s pride and murmuring against God.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“You should have seen him when he sat down to play cards in our club. His whole look seemed to say: “Cards! Me sit down to play whist with you! Is it compatible? Who must answer for it? Who broke up my activity and turned it into whist? Ah, perish Russia!” and he would trump majestically with a heart.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

“He was one of those ideal Russian beings who can suddenly be so struck by some strong idea that it seems to crush them then and there, sometimes even forever.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

“In short, it was suddenly revealed clearly to the whole town that it was not Yulia Mikhailovna who had scorned Varvara Petrovna all along and had not paid her a visit, but, on the contrary, it was Varvara Petrovna herself who had ‘kept Yulia Mikhailovna within bounds, when she would perhaps have run on foot to visit her, if only she had been sure that Varvara Petrovna would not chase her away.’ Varvara Petrovna’s prestige rose in the extreme.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

“’Then I didn’t know I was happy yet. Have you seen a leaf, a leaf from a tree?’” – Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

“’Stavrogin, why am I condemned to believe in you unto ages of ages?’” – Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

“Navriky Nikolaevich, as we shall see further on, attributed these capricious impulses in her, especially frequent of late, to outbursts of blind hatred for him, not really from malice – on the contrary, she honored, loved, and respected him, and he knew it himself – but from some special, unconscious hatred which, at moments, she was utterly unable to control.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

“Blum belonged to the strange breed of ‘unfortunate’ Germans – not at all owing to his extreme giftlessness, but precisely for no known reason. ‘Unfortunate’ Germans are not a myth, they really exist, even in Russia, and have their own type.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

“She was like someone closing her eyes and throwing herself off a roof.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

“Do you know why you married so disgracefully and basely then? Precisely because here the disgrace and senselessness reached the point of genius!” – Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons