The progressive Arts

“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”  ―  Leo Tolstoy

“She wants to know if I love her, that's all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there, like new batteries in the flashlight in the emergency kit in the hall closet.”  ―  Jonathan Safran Foer

“The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who stays away.”  ―  Barbara Kingsolver

It is easier to cover our feet with sandals than to cover the earth with carpets.

It is better to sit down than to stand, it is better to lie down than to sit, but death is the best of all.

“Before I forget, here's your homework. Where do you want me to put it?" She pointed at the trash can. "Right there would be fine.”  ―  Becca Fitzpatrick

“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”  ―  Charles Bukowski

Does it hurt?"' The childish question had escaped Harry's lips before he could stop it.  Dying? Not at all,' said Sirius. 'Quicker and easier than falling asleep.”  ―  J.K. Rowling

“Thank you for coming into my life and giving me joy, thank you for loving me and receiving my love in return. Thank you for the memories I will cherish forever. But most of all, thank you for showing me that there will come a time when I can eventually let you go. ”  ―  Nicholas Sparks

“So I only say, "So what should we do with our last few days?" "I just want to spend every possible minute of the rest of my life with you," Peeta replies.”  ―  Suzanne Collins

“Boys think girls are like books, If the cover doesn't catch their eye they won't bother to read what's inside".”  ―  Marilyn Monroe

“Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.”  ―  Pablo Picasso

“You've won the evolutionary lottery: You're a vampire. Let's go to Disneyland!”  ―  J.R. Ward

“I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”  ―  Mark Twain

“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters”  ―  Albert Einstein

“You'll get mixed up, of course, as you already know. You'll get mixed up with many strange birds as you go. So be sure when you step. Step with care and great tact and remember that Life's a Great Balancing Act. Just never forget to be dexterous and deft. And never mix up your right foot with your left.”  ―  Dr. Seuss

“Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said. 'One can't believe impossible things.' I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!”  ―  Lewis Carroll

“Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.”  ―  Edgar Allan Poe

“I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees for the trees have no tongues.”  ―  Dr. Seuss

“All thinking men are atheists.”  ―  Ernest Hemingway

“One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.”  ―  Helen Keller

“Laura felt a warmth inside her. It was very small, but it was strong. It was steady, like a tiny light in the dark, and it burned very low but no winds could make it flicker because it would not give up.”  ―  Laura Ingalls Wilder

“If you are lazy, and accept your lot, you may live in it. If you are willing to work, you can write your name anywhere you choose.”  ―  Gene Stratton-Porter

“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.”  ―  Kurt Vonnegut

“I wish I had more friends, but people are such jerks. If you can just get most people to leave you alone, you're doing good. If you can find even one person you really like, you're lucky. And if that person can also stand you, you're really lucky.”  ―  Bill Watterson

“No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful.”  ―  Eleanor Roosevelt

“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.”  ―  C.S. Lewis

“He who knows all the answers has not been asked all the questions.”  ―  Confucius

Sex without love is as hollow and ridiculous as love without sex.”  ―  Hunter S. Thompson

“And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow,  stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.”  ―  Dr. Seuss

“Maybe the truth is, there's a little bit of loser in all of us. Being happy isn't having everything in your life be perfect. Maybe it's about stringing together all the little things.”  ―  Ann Brashares

“Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition”  ―  Timothy Leary

“Never miss a good chance to shut up.”  ―  Will Rogers

“It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.”  ―  Henry David Thoreau

“And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can't ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one. You wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it's already happened.”  ―  Douglas Coupland

“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.”  ―  Pablo Neruda

“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.”  ―  Robert Frost

“She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands, appreciating its subtle nuances. She was a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum.”  ―  Jonathan Safran Foer

“Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.”  ―  F. Scott Fitzgerald

“One day you will ask me which is more important? My life or yours? I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life.”  ―  Kahlil Gibran

“I’m intimidated by the fear of being average.”  ―  Taylor Swift

“Nothing, Everything, Anything, Something: If you have nothing, then you have everything, because you have the freedom to do anything, without the fear of losing something.”  ―  Jarod Kintz

“Good humor may be said to be one of the very best articles of dress one can wear in society.”  ―  William Makepeace Thackeray

“Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation, which is not nurturing to the whole woman.”  ―  Maya Angelou

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”  ―  Albert Camus

“We did it, we bashed them wee Potter's the one, and Voldy's gone moldy, so now let's have fun!”  ―  J.K. Rowling

“Love is how you stay alive, even after you are gone.”  ―  Mitch Albom

“What the hell?" I asked. Is this daring escape being sponsored by Honda?”  ―  Richelle Mead

“The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere.” ―  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.”  ―  Mahatma Gandhi

“Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.”  ―  Mahatma Gandhi

“I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.”  ―  Louisa May Alcott

“Hooray! Hooray! The end of the world has been postponed! ”  ―  Hergé

“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.”  ―  Friedrich Nietzsche

“The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.”  ―  William H. Gass

“And then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes.”  ―  James Joyce

“Writing is easy. You only need to stare at a blank piece of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”  ―  Gene Fowler

“A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.”  ―  Ayn Rand

“April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.”  ―  Mark Twain

“We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.”  ―  Oscar Wilde

“I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop.”  ―  Bohumil Hrabal

“A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover.”  ―  Charles Bukowski

“Hey, girls, you're beautiful. Don't look at those stupid magazines with sticklike models. Eat healthy and exercise. That's all. Don't let anyone tell you you're not good enough. You're good enough, you are too good. Love your family with all your heart and listen to it. You are gorgeous, whether you're a size 4 or 14. It doesn't matter what you look like on the outside, as long as you're a good person, as long as you respect others. I know it's been told hundreds of times before, but it's true. Hey, girls, you are beautiful.”  ―  Gerard Way

“My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there.”  ―  Rumi

“It is always cruel to laugh at people, of course, although sometimes if they are wearing an ugly hat it is hard to control yourself.”  ―  Lemony Snicket

“I am always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.”  ―  J.D. Salinger

“But I didn't understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair.”  ―  Haruki Murakami

“Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.”  ―  Elbert Hubbard

“Contradict yourself. In order to live, you must remain broken up.”  ―  Wyndham Lewis

“Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings.”  ―  Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

“Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.”  ―  W.H. Auden

“It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.”  ―  George Washington

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.”  ―  Groucho Marx

“Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.”  ―  Joseph Heller

“Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on.  I hope you never have to think about anything as much as I think about you.”  ―  Jonathan Safran Foer

“The earth was overwhelmed with beauty and indifferent to it, and I went with a heart ready to crack for its unbearable loveliness.”  ―  Josephine Winslow Johnson

“Drowning yourself won't help, she told herself sternly. Now, drowning Will, on the other hand...”  ―  Cassandra Clare

“The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.”  ―  Randy Pausch

“It’s fascinating. You know all these words, and they’re all English, but when you string them together into sentences, they just don’t make any sense.”  ―  Cassandra Clare

“Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”  ―  Winston Churchill

“I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.”  ―  Jane Austen

“It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.”  ―  Jane Austen

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”  ―  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“She refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn't boring.”  ―  Zelda Fitzgerald

“Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.”  ―  Hunter S. Thompson

“Finding someone you love and who loves you back is a wonderful, wonderful feeling. But finding a true soul mate is an even better feeling. A soul mate is someone who understands you like no other, loves you like no other, will be there for you forever, no matter what. They say that nothing lasts forever, but I am a firm believer in the fact that for some, love lives on even after we're gone.”  ―  Cecelia Ahern

“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”  ―  Agatha Christie

“Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”  ―  Alexander Pope

“Above all else, guard your heart for it affects everything else you do.”  ―  Anonymous

“If your eyes weren't open, you wouldn't know the difference between dreaming and waking.”  ―  Richelle Mead

“You used to be much more..."muchier." You've lost your muchness.”  ―  Lewis Carroll

“if you love two people at the same time, choose the second. Because if you really loved the first one, you wouldn't have fallen for the second.”  ―  Johnny Depp

“Revenge, the sweetest morsel to the mouth that ever was cooked in hell.”  ―  Walter Scott

“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”  ―  Christopher Hitchens

“Someday you're gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You'll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life was changing...”  ―  Elizabeth Gilbert

“You…you got rid of that dress fast," I pointed out between heavy breaths. "I thought you liked it."  "I do like it," he said. His breathing was as heavy as mine. "I love it."  And then he took me to the bed.”  ―  Richelle Mead

“My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”  ―  Dalai Lama XIV

“The fate of your heart is your choice and no one else gets a vote”  ―  Sarah Dessen

“Every second he breathed, the smell of the grass, the cool air on his face, was so precious: To think that people had years and years, time to waste, so much time it dragged, and he was clinging to each second.”  ―  J.K. Rowling

“Have your adventures, make your mistakes, and choose your friends poorly -- all these make for great stories.”  ―  Chuck Palahniuk

“So you're a Shadowhunter,' Nate said. 'De Quincey told me that you lot were monsters.' 'Was that before or after he tried to eat you?' Will inquired.”  ―  Cassandra Clare

“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.”  ―  Ernest Hemingway

“We are all going, I thought, and it applies to turtles and turtlenecks, Alaska the girl and Alaska the place, because nothing can last, not even the earth itself. The Buddha said that suffering was caused by desire, we'd learned, and that the cessation of desire meant the cessation of suffering. When you stopped wishing things wouldn't fall apart, you'd stop suffering when they did.”  ―  John Green

“This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.”  ―  T.S. Eliot

“Someone who thinks death is the scariest thing doesn't know a thing about life.”  ―  Sue Monk Kidd

“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.”  ―  Anne Lamott

“ I  care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”  ―  Charlotte Brontë

“My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.”  ―  Orson Welles

“There is a saying in Tibetan, 'Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.' No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that's our real disaster.”  ―  Dalai Lama XIV

“I want to be in a relationship where you telling me you love me is just a ceremonious validation of what you already show me.”  ―  Steve Maraboli

“She'll kill me if she finds you in here. Can you climb trees? Tell me you can climb a tree!" Patch grinned, "I can fly.”  ―  Becca Fitzpatrick

“I am constantly torn between killing myself and killing everyone around me.”  ―  David Levithan

“Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.”  ―  Albert Camus

“I felt like crying but nothing came out. it was just a sort of sad sickness, sick sad, when you can't feel any worse. I think you know it. I think everybody knows it now and then. but I think I have known it pretty often, too often.”  ―  Charles Bukowski

“Think and wonder, wonder and think.”  ―  Dr. Seuss

“But Dumbledore says he doesn't care what they do as long as they don't take him off the Chocolate Frog cards.”  ―  J.K. Rowling

“For he would be thinking of love Till the stars had run away And the shadows eaten the moon.”  ―  W.B. Yeats

“A little girl robbed you?" Tessa said. "Actually, she wasn’t a little girl at all, as it turns out, but a midget in a dress with a penchant for violence, who goes by the name of Six-Fingered Nigel." "Easy mistake to make," Jem said.”  ―  Cassandra Clare

“If a thing loves, it is infinite.”  ―  William Blake

“If a thing loves, it is infinite.”  ―  William Blake

“My name is Ashallyn'darkmyr Tallyn, third son of the Unseelie Court...Let it be known--from this day forth, I vow to protect Meghan Chase, daughter of the Summer King, with my sword, my honor, and my life. Her desires are mine. Her wishes are mine. Should even the world stand against her, my blade will be at her side. And should it fail to protect her, let my own existence be forfeit. This I swear, on my honor, my True Name, and my life. From this day on..." His voice went even softer, but I still heard it as though he whispered it into my ear. "I am yours.”  ―  Julie Kagawa

“My name is Ashallyn'darkmyr Tallyn, third son of the Unseelie Court...Let it be known--from this day forth, I vow to protect Meghan Chase, daughter of the Summer King, with my sword, my honor, and my life. Her desires are mine. Her wishes are mine. Should even the world stand against her, my blade will be at her side. And should it fail to protect her, let my own existence be forfeit. This I swear, on my honor, my True Name, and my life. From this day on..." His voice went even softer, but I still heard it as though he whispered it into my ear. "I am yours.”  ―  Julie Kagawa

“I think I've discovered the secret of life -- you just hang around until you get used to it.”  ―  Charles M. Schulz

“Harry, don't go picking a row with Malfoy, don't forget, he's a prefect now, he could make life difficult for you..." "Wow, I wonder what it'd be like to have a difficult life?" said Harry sarcastically.”  ―  J.K. Rowling

“Harry, don't go picking a row with Malfoy, don't forget, he's a prefect now, he could make life difficult for you..." "Wow, I wonder what it'd be like to have a difficult life?" said Harry sarcastically.”  ―  J.K. Rowling

“Sometimes, when I clean a kill, I feed Buttercup the entrails. He has stopped hissing at me. Entrails. No hissing. This is the closest we will ever come to love.”  ―  Suzanne Collins

“I make mistakes; I'll be the second to admit it.”  ―  Jean Kerr

“It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them.”  ―  Cassandra Clare

“People are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of.”  ―  Paulo Coelho

“Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.”  ―  Gustave Flaubert

“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.”  ―  C.S. Lewis

“We're actors in our lives, pretendin' to be who we want people to think we are.”  ―  Simone Elkeles

“Life sucks, and then you die...”  ―  Stephenie Meyer

“He stared at her, knowing with certainty that he was falling in love. He pulled her close and kissed her beneath a blanket of stars, wondering how on earth he'd been lucky enough to find her.”  ―  Nicholas Sparks

“Love: a single word, a wispy thing, a word no bigger or longer than an edge. That's what it is: an edge; a razor. It draws up through the center of your life, cutting everything in two. Before and after. The rest of the world falls away on either side.”  ―  Lauren Oliver

“And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.”  ―  John Steinbeck

“A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”  ―  Roald Dahl

It must require bravery to be honest all the time.”  ―  Veronica Roth

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”  ―  Douglas Adams

“Somebody just gave me a shower radio. Thanks a lot. Do you really want music in the shower? I guess there's no better place to dance than a slick surface next to a glass door.”  ―  Jerry Seinfeld