Book quotes that I enjoy

[bookmarked-highlights]

"When you will not fly into a passion people know you are stronger than they are, because you are strong enough to hold in your rage, and they are not, and they say stupid things they wish they hadn't said afterward. There's nothing so strong as rage, except what makes you hold it in - that's stronger."

-A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

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"In the Sonoran desert there are ponds. You could be standing in the middle of one and not know it, because the ponds are usually dry. Nor would you know that inches below your feet, frogs are sleeping, their heartbeats down to once or twice a minute. They lie, dormant and waiting, these mud frogs, for without water their lives are incomplete, they are not fully themselves. For many months they sleep like this within the earth. And then the rain comes. And a hundred pairs of eyes pop out of the mud, and at night a hundred voices call across the moonlit water. "

-Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

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"Neptune can sense that I love him; his multiple desires are perfectly clear to me. What charms me the most about the whole business is that he stubbornly insists on remaining a dog, whereas his mistress would like to make a gentleman out of him."

-The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

[erikaschnellert]

My hope is in Him.

[elvenwhovian]

Happy Resurrection Sunday/ Easter everyone! He is Risen!

[bookmarked-highlights]

"My mother’s body shrank in her seat, and even Grandpa made himself smaller, readying for the yell, but nothing about my grandmother bothered me. Her arrows had no home inside me."

-The Butterfly Lampshade by Aimee Bender

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"Joseph would reach out to me occasionally, the same way the desert blooms a flower every now and then. You get so used to the subtleties of beige and brown, and then a sunshine-yellow poppy bursts from the arm of a prickly pear."

-The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

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"'But it is nice to be praised and admired, and I can’t help saying I like it,' said Meg, looking half ashamed of the confession.

'That is perfectly natural, and quite harmless, if the liking does not become a passion and lead one to do foolish or unmaidenly things. Learn to know and value the praise which is worth having, and to excite the admiration of excellent people by being modest as well as pretty, Meg.'"

-Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

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"My father always says that his brother made the family proud twice, once as a young man when he became a doctor and once as a not-so-young man when he became a doctor for the second time. Uncle Muhammad is our family’s symbol of perseverance."

-Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas

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“Hear me, Pip! I adopted her to be loved. I bred her and educated her, to be loved. I developed her into what she is, that she might be loved. Love her!” She said the word often enough, and there could be no doubt that she meant to say it; but if the often repeated word had been hate instead of love—despair—revenge—dire death—it could not have sounded from her lips more like a curse.

-Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

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"'They didn't recognize me,' I say.

I come to a halt in the middle of the sidewalk, completely flabbergasted.

'They didn't recognize me,' I repeat.

He stops in turn, my hand still on his arm.

'It is because they have never seen you,' he says. 'I would recognize you anywhere.'"

-The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

[bookmarked-highlights]

"She taught me to revel. She taught me to wonder. She taught me to laugh. My sense of humor had always measured up to everyone else's; but timid, introverted me, I showed it sparingly: I was a smiler. In her presence I threw back my head and laughed out loud for the first time in my life."

-Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

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"'Whatever comes,' she said, 'cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can very a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it."

-A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

[bookmarked-highlights]

"Clocks—that's the problem Every clock is a nest of minutes and hours. Clocks strap us into their shape. Instead of heading for the nearest star, all we do is corkscrew. Clocks lock us into minutes, make ferris wheel riders of us all, lug us round and round from number to number, dice the time of our lives into tiny bits until the bits are all we know and the only question we care to ask is 'What time is it?'"

-Love, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

[bookmarked-highlights]

"Stealing, of course, is a crime, and a very impolite thing to do. But like most important things, it is excusable under certain circumstances. Stealing is not excusable if, for instance, you are in a museum and you decide that a certain painting would look better in your house, and you simply grab the painting and take it there. But if you were very, very hungry, and you had no way of obtaining money, it might be excusable to grab the painting, take it to your house, and eat it."

-A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Wide Window by Lemony Snicket

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"He was not lacking in intelligence, although his particular intelligence was not of the sort that an industrious society values. While his skills were confined to manual work, he displayed a talent that did not stem solely from mere mechanical aptitude and, however uneducated he might be, he approached everything with a spirit of ingeniousness, something which, where small tasks are concerned, distinguishes the artists from the mere laborers and, in conversation, shows that knowledge is not everything."

-The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

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"Many do not know about two precious weapons: the power of the cross and blood of Jesus, and every Christian's legal right to the use of the wonderful name of Jesus."

-Defeated Enemies by Corrie Ten Boom

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"I found that when we taught the gospel in an uncomplicated way, the Holy Spirit did not need a high I.Q. to reveal Himself."

-Common Sense Not Needed by Corrie Ten Boom