Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by the bloggers over at the Broke and the Bookish. Book bloggers from all around create lists based on the chosen topics, and post links to the host blog to share our love of books. This week the topic is Top Ten Favorite Quotes From Books…now this was seriously a hard topic…I mean come on…from one good book I can probably give you 10 favorite quotes…so this was very hard to narrow down…so these probably aren’t my exactly top 10, but most recently read and/or that I actually remembered. So…in no specific order….
1. “Only difference between a traitor and a patriot is your perspective” ―Jeanette Walls (I think this was from Half Broke Horses)
2. “When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
3. “I hadn’t been paying much attention to things like the sunrise, but that old sun had been coming up anyway. It didn’t really care how I felt, it was going to rise and set regardless of whether I noticed it, and if I was going to enjoy it, that was up to me.”
― Jeannette Walls (Another one from Half Broke Horses)
4. “We still hadn’t learned, though, that growing up is all about getting hurt. And then getting over it. You hurt. You recover. You move on. Odds are pretty good you’re just going to get hurt again. But each time, you learn something.
Each time, you come out of it a little stronger, and at some point you realize that there are more flavors of pain than coffee. There’s the little empty pain of leaving something behind – gradutaing, taking the next step forward, walking out of something familiar and safe into the unknown. There’s the big, whirling pain of life upending all of your plans and expecations. There’s the sharp little pains of failure, and the more obscure aches of successes that didn’t give you what you thought they would. There are the vicious, stabbing pains of hopes being torn up. The sweet little pains of finding others, giving them your love, and taking joy in their life they grow and learn. There’s the steady pain of empathy that you shrug off so you can stand beside a wounded friend and help them bear their burdens.
And if you’re very, very lucky, there are a very few blazing hot little pains you feel when you realized that you are standing in a moment of utter perfection, an instant of triumph, or happiness, or mirth which at the same time cannot possibly last – and yet will remain with you for life.
Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don’t feel it.
Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it’s a big part, and sometimes it isn’t, but either way, it’s a part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you’re alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another.”
― Jim Butcher (one of the Dresden File books, I don’t remember which one)
5. “Most young dealers of the Silicon Chip Era regard a reference library as merely a waste of space. Old Timers on the West Coast seem to retain a fondness for reference books that goes beyond the practical. Everything there is to know about a given volume may be only a click away, but there are still a few of us who’d rather have the book than the click. A bookman’s love of books is a love of books, not merely of the information in them.” ― Larry McMurtry, Books
6. “As the dozers moved into a section of black bear dens, Ed saw two young black bears dart out of their homes, only to be crushed and buried alive by debris falling from the bulldozers above. ‘I wonder how many other bears didn’t even make it out of their den,’ Ed said.” -Tree Spiker by Mike Roselle This is by no means a good quote, but it was so very powerful…that’s why I included it.
7.“Join the mob or go what you want. Give yourself plenty of quiet time alone in order to get in touch with who you are….Focus power of thought. Remind yourself that the world is yours for the asking. The non-risker does not grow, you just get older. When you have decided which ideas, beliefs, relationships, and situations no longer work for you, it is time to release them. Let go of negative thoughts—view them as a flight of birds crossing your path. See them fly into view and continue on their way.” -Wildflower by Mark Seal
8. “Responsibility is a position. An attitude towards events. You can either take responsibility or you can feel victimized by the world. Your choice of whether to play the victim or take responsibility will determine who power grows—yours or someone else’s. If you take the position of victim, you lose power. If you choose responsibility, you have power then, to do something about what’s happening—to choose your next step. It’s all about attitude.” -Wildflower by Mark Seal
9. “So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.” ―Christopher Reeve
10. “Other people’s houses were always fascinating. As soon as you went through the door for the first time, you got the feel of the atmosphere, and so discovered something about the personalities of the people who lived there.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, Coming Home
