Twaddle, rubbish, and gossip is what people want, not action.… The secret of life is to chatter freely about all one wishes to do and how one is always being prevented—and then do nothing.
—Soren Kierkegaard
I went to the store the other day to buy a bolt for our front door, for, as I told the storekeeper, the governor was coming here. "Aye," said he, "and the legislature too." "Then I will take two bolts," said I.
—Henry David Thoreau
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
—William Shakespeare
When someone behaves like a beast, he says, "After all, one is only human." But when he is treated like a beast, he says, "After all, one is human.
—Karl Kraus
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
—Abraham Lincoln
To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior "righteous indignation"—this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.
—Aldous Huxley
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace in a continual state of alarm (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
—H. L. Mencken
He had the misleading air of openhearted simplicity that people have come to demand of their politicians.
—Rae Foley
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.
—George Orwell
We are tied to each other. We can hate and love, miss and loathe each other all within the same breath. We can never want to see each other again while never wanting to let go.
—Taylor Jenkins Reid in After I Do
I thought it would all fall into place. I've changed my mind. Do nothing, and nothing happens. Life is about decisions. You either make them or they're made for you, but you can't avoid them.
—Mhairi McFarlane in You Had Me At Hello
I do what most women do. I meet someone and some of it's right, maybe he looks right, or has the right job, or the right background, and, instead of sitting back and waiting for him to reveal his other bits, I make them up. I decide how he thinks, how he's going to treat me, and, sure enough, every time I conclude that this time he's definitely my perfect man, and all of a sudden, well, not so suddenly perhaps, usually around six months after we've split up, I see that he wasn't the person I thought he was at all.
—Jane Green in Mr. Maybe
Bravery is feeling fear but doing the thing anyway.
—Jennifer Donnelly in The Wild Rose
Maybe love was superstition, a prayer we said to keep the truth of loneliness at bay. I tilted my head back. The stars looked like they were close together, when really they were millions of miles apart. In the end, maybe love just meant longing for something impossibly bright and forever out of reach.
—Leigh Bardugo in Ruin and Rising
Do you ever wonder why things have to turn out the way they do?
—Nicholas Sparks in A Walk to Remember