Week #8 Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen Favorite Quotes from Books I've Read

1. "Truths walk toward us on the paths of our questions. As soon as you think you have the answer, you have closed the path and may miss vital new information. Wait awhile in the stillness, and do not rush to conclusions, no matter how uncomfrotable the unknowing."

-from Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear

2. "It's okay to try out negative emotions and see how they feel, but it cetainly isn't a place one would wisely want to stay. When the soul is in human form you get to play--to see how it feels to be happy or sad, jealous or grateful, and so on. But you are supposed to learn from the experience and ultimately figure out which feels painful and which feels great."

-from Mutant Message Down Under by Marlo Morgan

3. " It is a fair, even handed, noble adjustment of things that while there is infection in disease and sorrow., there is nothing in the world so irresisteibly contagious as laughter and good humor."

-from The Christmas Caroll by Charles Dickens

4. "There are only two kinds of people in the end, those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.' "

-from The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

5. "Knowing can be a curse on a person's life. I'd traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth and I didn't know which one was heavier. Which one took the most strength to carry around? It was a ridiculous question, though, because once you know the truth, you can't ever go back and pick up your suitcase of lies, heavier or not, the truth is yours now."

-from The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

6. "And when you get down to it, Lily, that's the only purpose grand enough for a human life. Not just to love but to persist in love."

-from The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

7. "Anybody could get worked up . . . it's peacefulness that is hard to come by on purpose."

-from Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver

8. "I prefer to be a widower of Ethel than a husband to anyone else, even in my imagination."

-from The Bird Artist by Howard Norman

9. "Sometimes simply getting from bed to bathroom can take the charm out of a new day."

-from Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz

10. "We who survive must go on in the names of those who fall. Perserverance is impossible if we don't permit ourselves to hope."

-from Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz

11. "When your're as hollow as Enoch Cain, the emptiness aches. He's desperate to fill it, but he doesn't have the patience or the commitment to fill it with anything worthwhile. Love, charity, faith, wisdom - those virtues & others are hard won, with commitment & patience and we acquire them one spoonful at a time. Cain wants to be filled quickly. He wants the emptiness inside poured full, in quick, great gushes, and right now."

-from From the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz

12. "I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad--as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptations; they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigor. ... If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? ...Preconceived opinions, forgone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by; there I plant my foot."

-from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

13. "More than anything else, our understanding and use of language shapes us. Language is the way we express every idea, every thought. Sloppy thinking leads to a sloppy use of language. But the opposite is also true. Imprecise language causes imprecise thinking."

from Whispers by Dean Koontz