The progressive Arts

“Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.”  ―  Lawrence Ferlinghetti

“That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.”  ―  J.D. Salinger

“It's the job that's never started as takes longest to finish.”  ―  J.R.R. Tolkien

“Every luxury must be paid for, and everything is a luxury, starting with being in this world.”  ―  Cesare Pavese

“There are two types of people in this world. People who hate clowns...and clowns. (Bobby Pendragon)”  ―  D.J. MacHale

“Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.”  ―  Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”  ―  Franz Kafka

“you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.”  ―  Stephen King

“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”  ―  Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

“Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.”  ―  Lewis Carroll

“Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.”  ―  Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.” ―  Mother Teresa

“A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.”  ―  Martin Luther King Jr.

“I am glad you are here with me. Here at the end of all things, Sam.”  ―  J.R.R. Tolkien

“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.”  ―  Edgar Degas

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.”  ―  Abraham Lincoln

“The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.”  ―  Bill Watterson

“You're so easy to tease. And yes, your friend is just fine. Well, except that he keeps putting all my things away and trying to clean up. Now I can't find anything. He's compulsive.”  ―  Cassandra Clare

“The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter.”  ―  Paulo Coelho

“When things break, it's not the actual breaking that prevents them from getting back together again. It's because a little piece gets lost - the two remaining ends couldn't fit together even if they wanted to. The whole shape has changed.”  ―  John Green

“I don't hate you.. I just don't like that you exist”  ―  Gena Showalter

“If you don't go after what you want, you'll never have it. If you don't ask, the answer is always no. If you don't step forward, you're always in the same place.”  ―  Nora Roberts

“Touch her, and I'll freeze your testicles off and put them in a jar. Understand?”  ―  Julie Kagawa

“Gus: "It tastes like..." Me: "Food." Gus: "Yes, precisely. It tastes like food, excellently prepared. But it does not taste, how do I put this delicately...?" Me: "It does not taste like God Himself cooked heaven into a series of five dishes which were then served to you accompanied by several luminous balls of fermented, bubbly plasma while actual and literal flower petals floated down around your canal-side dinner table." Gus: "Nicely phrased." Gus's father: "Our children are weird." My dad: "Nicely phrased.”  ―  John Green

“When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”  ―  Kahlil Gibran

“Miracles are like meatballs, because nobody can exactly agree on what they are made of, where they come from, or how often they should appear.”  ―  Lemony Snicket

“And for the briefest instant, it almost feels like we're together again.”  ―  Nicholas Sparks

“All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.”  ―  Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If you have enough book space, I don't want to talk to you.”  ―  Terry Pratchett

“Even the Inquisitor's eyebrows shot up when Magnus strode through the gate. The High Warlock was wearing black leather pants, a belt with a buckle in the shape of a jeweled  M , and a cobalt-blue Prussian military jacket open over a white lace shirt. He shimmered with layers of glitter. His gaze rested for a moment on Alec's face with amusement and a hint of something else before moving on to Jace, prone on the ground. "Is he dead?" he inquired. "He looks dead." "No," snapped Maryse. "He's not dead." "Have you checked? I could kick him if you want." Magnus moved toward Jace. "Stop that!" the Inquisitor snapped, sounding like Clary's third-grade teacher demanding that she stop doodling on her desk with a marker.”  ―  Cassandra Clare

“I wasn't actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.”  ―  F. Scott Fitzgerald

“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”  ―  T.H. White

“There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.”  ―  Patrick Rothfuss

“And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.”  ―  Kurt Vonnegut

“The thing under my bed waiting to grab my ankle isn't real. I know that, and I also know that if I'm careful to keep my foot under the covers, it will never be able to grab my ankle.”  ―  Stephen King

“I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race-that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant.”  ―  Markus Zusak

“Don't worry about a thing, every little thing is gonna be alright”  ―  Bob Marley

“Friendship- my definition- is built on two things. Respect and trust. Both elements have to be there. And it has to be mutual. You can have respect for someone, but if you don't have trust, the friendship will crumble.”  ―  Stieg Larsson

“On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.”  ―  Michel de Montaigne

“There's always room for a story that can transport people to another place.”  ―  J.K. Rowling

“Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you'll look back and realize they were big things.”  ―  Robert Brault

“I run for I don't know how long. Hours, maybe, or days. Alex told me to run. So I run. You have to understand. I am no one special. I am just a single girl. I am five feet two inches tall and I am in-between in every way. But I have a secret. You can build walls all the way to the sky and I will find a way to fly above them. You can try to pin me down with a hundred thousand arms, but I will find a way to resist. And there are many of us out there, more than you think. People who refuse to stop believing. People who refuse to come to earth. People who love in a world without walls, people who love into hate, into refusal, against hope,and without fear. I love you. Remember. They cannot take it.”  ―  Lauren Oliver

“Trains are great dirty smoky things," said Will. "You won't like it."  Tessa was unmoved. "I won't know if I like it until I try it, will I?"  "I've never swum naked in the Thames before, but I know I wouldn't like it."  "But think how entertaining for sightseers," said Tessa, and she saw Jem duck his head to hide the quick flash of his grin.”  ―  Cassandra Clare

“To you, I'm an atheist. To God, I'm the loyal opposition.”  ―  Woody Allen

“Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.”  ―  H.G. Wells

“There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him, I say, stay in there, I'm not going to let anybody see you.”  ―  Charles Bukowski

“aren't you, uh... reproducing? "sure, we love reproducing it's one of our favorite things.”  ―  Cassandra Clare

“I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.”  ―  Oscar Wilde

“Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.”  ―  Anne Frank

“Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result -- eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly -- in you.”  ―  Bill Bryson

“Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.”  ―  Kurt Vonnegut

“I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.”  ―  George Eliot

“He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.”  ―  Douglas Adams

“Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.”  ―  Leo Tolstoy

“Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.”  ―  Pauline Kael

“Knowing too much of your future is never a good thing.”  ―  Rick Riordan

“You see, you closed your eyes. That was the difference. Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too--even when you’re in the dark. Even when you’re falling.”  ―  Mitch Albom

“Speaking personally, you can have my gun, but you'll take my book when you pry my cold, dead fingers off of the binding.”  ―  Stephen King

“I try to live life so that I can live with myself.”  ―  John Green

“Romance is thinking about your significant other, when you are supposed to be thinking about something else.”  ―  Nicholas Sparks

“I feel like someone breathed new air into my lungs. I am not Abnegation. I am not Dauntless.  I am Divergent.”  ―  Veronica Roth

“So what? All writers are lunatics!”  ―  Cornelia Funke

“So what was that all about?" "I think," Jace said, "that she asked if she could touch my mango." "She  said  that?" Jace shrugged. "Yeah, then she gave me her number.”  ―  Cassandra Clare

“God alert!" Blackjack yelled. "It's the wine dude! Mr. D sighed in exasperation. "The next person, or horse, who calls me the 'wine dude' will end up in a bottle of Merlot!”  ―  Rick Riordan

“Ten Things You Shouldn't Say on a Date. 1. You're wearing that? 2. Something smells funny. 3. Where's the Tylenol? 4. And to think, I first wanted to date your brother. 5. I have a confession to make… 6. My dad has a suit just like that. 7. That man is hot. Look at him. 8. My ex, may he rot in hell forever… 9. You're going to order that? Seriously? 10. You're how old?”  ―  Gena Showalter

“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”  ―  Plato

“If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn't love as much in eighty years as I could in a day.”  ―  Emily Brontë

“Once I pulled a job, I was so stupid. I picked a guy's pocket on an airplane and made a run for it.”  ―  Rodney Dangerfield

“The truly free man is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving an excuse.”  ―  Jules Renard

“I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.”  ―  Terry Pratchett

“The truly free man is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving an excuse.”  ―  Jules Renard

“The mouth is made for communication, and nothing is more articulate than a kiss.”  ―  Jarod Kintz

“All serious daring starts from within.”  ―  Eudora Welty

“Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a person's sexual choice is the result and sum of their fundamental convictions. Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life. Show me the person they sleep with and I will tell you their valuation of themselves. No matter what corruption they're taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which they cannot perform for any motive but their own enjoyment - just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity! - an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exultation, only on the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces them to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and accept their real ego as their standard of value. They will always be attracted to the person who reflects their deepest visio...

“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself. ”  ―  Eleanor Roosevelt

“You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince”  ―  E.L. James

“Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.”  ―  Victor Hugo

“True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.”  ―  Mortimer J. Adler

“A witty woman is a treasure; a witty beauty is a power.”  ―  George Meredith

“She leaned down and looked at his lifeless face and Leisel kissed her best friend, Rudy Steiner, soft and true on his lips. He tasted dusty and sweet. He tasted like regret in the shadows of trees and in the glow of the anarchist's suit collection. She kissed him long and soft, and when she pulled herself away, she touched his mouth with her fingers...She did not say goodbye. She was incapable, and after a few more minutes at his side, she was able to tear herself from the ground. It amazes me what humans can do, even when streams are flowing down their faces and they stagger on...”  ―  Markus Zusak

“Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.”  ―  Milan Kundera

“When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”  ―  Oscar Wilde

“Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option.”  ―  Maya Angelou

“The good times of today are the sad thoughts of tomorrow.”  ―  Bob Marley

“It was a mistake," you said. But the cruel thing was, it felt like the mistake was mine, for trusting you.”  ―  David Levithan

“For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.”  ―  John Milton

“She seems so cool, so focused, so quiet, yet her eyes remain fixed upon the horizon. You think you know all there is to know about her immediately upon meeting her, but everything you think you know is wrong. Passion flows through her like a river of blood.  She only looked away for a moment, and the mask slipped, and you fell. All your tomorrows start here.”  ―  Neil Gaiman

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”  ―  C.S. Lewis

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.”  ―  Gautama Buddha

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”  ―  James Baldwin

“There were always in me, two women at least, one woman desperate and bewildered, who felt she was drowning and another who would leap into a scene, as upon a stage, conceal her true emotions because they were weaknesses, helplessness, despair, and present to the world only a smile, an eagerness, curiosity, enthusiasm, interest.”  ―  Anaïs Nin

“You are what you believe yourself to be.”  ―  Paulo Coelho

“I'm lonely. Why do you think I had to learn to act so independent? I also get mad too quickly, and I hog the covers, and my second toe is longer than my big one. My hair has it's own zip code. Plus, I get certifiably crazy when I've got PMS. You don't love someone because they're perfect. You love them in spite of the fact that they're not.”  ―  Jodi Picoult

“I don't believe in failure, because simply by saying you've failed, you've admitted you attempted. And anyone who attempts is not a failure. Those who truly fail in my eyes are the ones who never try at all. The ones who sit on the couch and whine and moan and wait for the world to change for them.”  ―  Sarah Dessen

“Some people see things that are and ask, Why?  Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not?  Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that.”  ―  George Carlin

“Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door. ”  ―  Coco Chanel

“I wonder how many people don't get the one they want, but end up with the one they're supposed to be with.”  ―  Fannie Flagg

“Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage.”  ―  Ambrose Bierce

“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection”  ―  Gautama Buddha

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” ―  Confucius

“The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely.”  ―  Charlotte Brontë

“Love is a better master than duty.”  ―  Albert Einstein

“The secret of flight is this -- you have to do it immediately, before your body realizes it is defying the laws.”  ―  Michael Cunningham

“The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.”  ―  David Foster Wallace

“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body  love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”  ―  Mary Oliver

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”  ―  Haruki Murakami

“At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.”  ―  Chuck Palahniuk

“I want to grow a flower for every time someone tells me “F*** you.” Then I’ll go back to that person and pin the flower on their lapel in a gesture of friendship. And while they are looking down on it in astonishment, I’ll bunch up my knuckles and punch them in the face.”  ―  Jarod Kintz

“Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.”  ―  Rumi

“Sorry, are you telling me that your demon-slaying buddies need to be driven to their next assignment with the forces of darkness by my mom?”  ―  Cassandra Clare

“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?" "What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?" "I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet. Pooh nodded thoughtfully. "It's the same thing," he said.”  ―  A.A. Milne

I don't want to be alone, I want to be left alone.”  ―  Audrey Hepburn

“What did it feel like, I wondered, to love someone that much? So much that you couldn't even control yourself when they came close, as if you might just break free of whatever was holding you and throw yourself at them with enough force to easily overwhelm you both.”  ―  Sarah Dessen

“Sometimes God allows what he hates to accomplish what he loves.”  ―  Joni Eareckson Tada

“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”  ―  Mother Teresa

“Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings.”  ―  Robert Benchley

“Jumping out a window five hundred feet above ground is not usually my idea of fun. Especially when I'm wearing bronze wings and flapping my arms like a duck.”  ―  Rick Riordan

“The windows of my soul I throw Wide open to the sun.”  ―  John Greenleaf Whittier

“From the backstabbing co-worker to the meddling sister-in-law, you are in charge of how you react to the people and events in your life. You can either give negativity power over your life or you can choose happiness instead. Take control and choose to focus on what is important in your life. Those who cannot live fully often become destroyers of life.”  ―  Anaïs Nin

“Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.”  ―  Flannery O'Connor

“No matter how much time has passed, these things still affect us and the world we live in. If you don't pay attention to the past, you'll never understand the future. It's all linked together.”  ―  Sarah Dessen

“I've heard the word 'fear'. I simply choose to believe it doesn't apply to me.”  ―  Cassandra Clare

“Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind.”  ―  Terry Pratchett

“Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.”  ―  Oscar Wilde

“I've heard the word 'fear'. I simply choose to believe it doesn't apply to me.”  ―  Cassandra Clare

“We both have war inside us. Sometimes it keeps us alive. Sometimes it threatens to destroy us.”  ―  Veronica Roth

“The covers of this book are too far apart.”  ―  Ambrose Bierce

“Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.”  ―  Flannery O'Connor

“No matter how much time has passed, these things still affect us and the world we live in. If you don't pay attention to the past, you'll never understand the future. It's all linked together.”  ―  Sarah Dessen

“But love is always new. Regardless of whether we love once, twice, or a dozen times in our life, we always face a brand-new situation. Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere. We simply have to accept it, because it is what nourishes our existence. If we reject it, we die of hunger, because we lack the courage to stretch out a hand and pluck the fruit from the branches of the tree of life. We have to take love where we find it, even if that means hours, days, weeks of disappointment and sadness. The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us. And to save us.”  ―  Paulo Coelho

“As if you were on fire from within. The moon lives in the lining of your skin.”  ―  Pablo Neruda

“No matter who you are, no matter where you live, and no matter how many people are chasing you, what you don't read is often as important as what you do read.”  ―  Lemony Snicket

“Is that a bulletproof vest? See, now that's so insulting. That's like saying I'm not smart enough to shoot you in the head."  Eddie DeChooch”  ―  Janet Evanovich