Essayists Quotes

• Had I not created my whole world, I would certainly have died in other people’s.

  Anais Nin

  Break Up, Creating, People

  17 Copy quote

• You shall know the truth, and it will make you odd.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Funny, Truth, Humorous

  122 Copy quote
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  Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.

  Salman Rushdie

  Courage, Communication, Novelists

  Salman Rushdie (1989). “The Satanic Verses”, New York, N.Y. : Viking

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• Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Confidence, Wisdom

  29 Copy quote

• Be not ashamed women, ... You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.

  Walt Whitman

  Inspirational, Being Yourself, Women

  Walt Whitman (2005). “Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass”, p.68, Oxford University Press

  69 Copy quote

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• Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  781 Copy quote

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• In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair...the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Life, Hate, Believe

  223 Copy quote

• Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.

  James A. Baldwin

  Inspirational, Change, Leadership

  "As Much Truth As One Can Bear". The New York Times Book Review, January 14, 1962.

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• Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wall, Work, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2002). “The Essays of Henry D. Thoreau: Selected and Edited by Lewis Hyde”, p.283, North Point Press

  6 Copy quote

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• A good friend will always stab you in the front.

  Oscar Wilde

  Best Friend, Friendship, Wisdom

  106 Copy quote

• Every relationship is fundamentally a power struggle, and the individual in power is whoever likes the other person less.

  Chuck Klosterman

  Relationship, Struggle, Power

  Chuck Klosterman (2004). “Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto”, p.9, Simon and Schuster

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  To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

  C. S. Lewis

  Love, Inspirational, Broken Heart

  174 Copy quote

• A serious life, by definition, is a life one reflects on, a life one tries to make sense of and bear witness to. Truth in a memoir is achieved not through a recital of actual events; it is achieved when the reader comes to believe that the writer is working hard to engage with the experience at hand. What happened to the writer is not what matters; what matters is the large sense that the writer is able to make of what happened.

  Vivian Gornick

  Life, Truth, Believe

  50 Copy quote

• Resist much, obey little.

  Walt Whitman

  Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

  Walt Whitman (2013). “Leaves of Grass”, p.15, Simon and Schuster

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• Sometimes we reveal ourselves when we are least like ourselves.

  Anais Nin

  Inspirational, Behaviour, Abnormal

  8 Copy quote

• My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?

  C. S. Lewis

  God, Christian, Atheist

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.7, Simon and Schuster

  42 Copy quote

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  Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Confidence, Dream, Mistake

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joel Porte (1982). “Emerson in His Journals”, p.206, Harvard University Press

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• Memories do not always soften with time; some grow edges like knives.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Memories, Knives, Novelists

  15 Copy quote

• No time to grieve for roses when the forests are burning.

  Zbigniew Herbert

  Grief, Grieving, Rose

  Zbigniew Herbert (2014). “The Collected Poems 1956 - 1998”, p.19, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• I never wanted to be well-rounded. I do not admire well-rounded people nor their work. So far as I can see, nothing good in the world has ever been done by well-rounded people. The good work is done by people with jagged, broken edges, because those edges cut things and leave an imprint, a design.

  Harry Crews

  Work, Creativity, Cutting

  41 Copy quote

• Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational, Life, Inspiring

  209 Copy quote

• Doctors most commonly get mixed up between absence of evidence and evidence of abense

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Doctors, Medicine, Mixing

  73 Copy quote

• In moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy but always against one's own body.

  George Orwell

  Fighting, Perception, Enemy

  George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.198, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I suspect the most we can hope for, and it's no small hope, is that we never give up, that we never stop giving ourselves permission to try to love and receive love.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Love, Hope, Giving Up

  Elizabeth Strout (2013). “Abide With Me”, p.209, Simon and Schuster

  29 Copy quote

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• You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.

  Unknown

  Love, Relationship, Romantic

  682 Copy quote