Sourced Quotations

Quotations I like. With proper sources.

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I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning to sail my ship.

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (1868)

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Every day begins with an act of courage and hope: getting out of bed.

Mason Cooley, City Aphorisms (1984)

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Holding people away from you, and denying yourself love, that doesn’t make you strong. If anything, it makes you weaker. Because you’re doing it out of fear.

Sarah Dessen, This Lullaby (2002).

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Love can defeat that nameless terror. Loving one another, we take the sting from death. Loving our mysterious blue planet, we resolve riddles and dissolve all enigmas in contingent bliss.

Edward Abbey, Down the River (1982)

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A more appropriate adjective for measuring the degree of a friendship should be “good” – how good, rather than “close” – how close. A good friend is not necessarily close; a close friend is not necessarily good.

John Newton, Ph.D., Complete Conduct Principles for the 21st Century (2000), p. 45.

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“Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over.”

Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place (1982).

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'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.

Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849).

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Oh, the comfort — the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person — having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.

Dinah Craik, A Life for a Life (1859).

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Blessed are they who have the gift of making friends, for it is one of God's best gifts. It involves many things, but, above all, the power of going out of one's self and appreciating whatever is noble and loving in another.

Thomas Hughes, in Katherine Frances Jelf, George Edward Jelf: A Memoir (London: Skeffington & Son, 1909), p. 10.

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You don't love someone because they're perfect. You love them in spite of the fact that they're not.

Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper (2004).

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The finest friendships are between those who can do without each other.

Elbert Hubbard, in 'Exclusive Friendships', Love, Life & Work (1906).

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Growing apart doesn't change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled. I'm glad for that.

Ally Condie, Matched (2010).

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The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.

Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1838–1839), Chapter 3.

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Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

Anaïs Nin, Diary entry (March 1937).

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Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.

Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977).

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If we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls.

Maya Angelou, A Brave and Startling Truth (1995). Written for the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations.

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In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.

Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies (1992).