notable quotables.

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”  

George Eliot


“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” 
Ralph Waldo Emerson

"We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will."
Chuck Palahniuk

"There must be something in books, something we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don't stay for nothing."
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

"You're an interesting species. An interesting mix. You're capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other.” 
Carl Sagan, Contact

"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."
Carl Sagan

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”  
The Pale Blue Dot, Carl Sagan

“At the center of your being
you have the answer;
you know who you are
and you know what you want.”
Lao Tzu


“After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?” 
Neil DeGrasse Tyson

"One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple."
 Jack Kerouac

“Tell your friend that in his death, a part of you dies and goes with him. Wherever he goes, you also go. He will not be alone.”  
Jiddu K.


"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you."
Maya Angelou


“Dearest Cecilia, You’d be forgiven for thinking me mad, the way I acted this afternoon. The truth is I feel rather light headed and foolish in your presence, Cee, and I don’t think I can blame the heat.” 
Ian McEwan, Atonement

“I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it's these things I'd believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn't all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything.”  
F. Scott Fitzgerald


"And your very flesh shall be a great poem."
Walt Whitman


"Be not ashamed women,...You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul."
Walt Whitman


“An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. "Can they be brought together?" This is a practical question. We must get down to it. "I despise intelligence" really means: "I cannot bear my doubts.” 
Albert Camus

"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it."
Mahatma Gandhi


"With freedom, books, flowers and the moon, who could not be happy?"
Oscar Wilde

"The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last."
Oscar Wilde


“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” 
Friedrich Nieztsche 


"What labels me, negates me."
Nieztsche

"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."

Emerson