Let's start with something inspirational and fun -- the quotes I saved on Goodreads from this year's books. Every so often I'll come across something I know I want to save, either because it's funny or beautiful or just nicely phrased, and Goodreads is excellent for cataloging those. So let's look at my favorite quotes of the year, in order of when I added them.
“There was an assumption that I was personally attacking Sarah Palin by impersonating her on TV. No one ever said it was 'mean' when Chevy Chase played Gerald Ford falling down all the time. No one ever accused Dana Carvey or Darrell Hammond or Dan Aykroyd of 'going too far' in their political impressions. You see what I'm getting at here. I am not mean and Mrs. Palin is not fragile. To imply otherwise is a disservice to us both.”― Tina Fey, Bossypants
“I have no affinity for animals. I don’t hate animals and I would never hurt an animal; I just don’t actively care about them. When a coworker shows me cute pictures of her dog, I struggle to respond correctly, like an autistic person who has been taught to recognize human emotions from flash cards. In short, I am the worst.”― Tina Fey, Bossypants
(The attribution is weird on this upcoming set of quotes, because I was reading a collection of all the Kindle-available Anne books, so when I uploaded the quote, that's how it marked them.)
“If I really wanted to pray I'll tell you what I'd do. I'd go out into a great big field all alone or into the deep, deep, woods, and I'd look up into the sky—up—up—up—into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I'd just FEEL a prayer.”― L.M. Montgomery, The Anne Stories (Anne of Green Gables, #1-3, 5, 7-8)
“But have you ever noticed one encouraging thing about me, Marilla? I never make the same mistake twice."
"I don't know as that's much benefit when you're always making new ones."
"Oh, don't you see, Marilla? There must be a limit to the mistakes one person can make, and when I get to the end of them, then I'll be through with them. That's a very comforting thought.”― L.M. Montgomery, The Anne Stories (Anne of Green Gables, #1-3, 5, 7-8)
“I am sure we should not shut our hearts against the healing influences that nature offers us.”― L.M. Montgomery, The Anne Stories (Anne of Green Gables, #1-3, 5, 7-8)
“Mrs. Lynde was complaining the other day that it wasn't much of a world. She said whenever you looked forward to anything pleasant you were sure to be more or less disappointed …perhaps that is true. But there is a good side to it too. The bad things don't always come up to your expectations either …they nearly always turn out ever so much better than you think.”― L.M. Montgomery, The Anne Stories (Anne of Green Gables, #1-3, 5, 7-8)
“I'd like to add some beauty to life," said Anne dreamily. "I don't exactly want to make people KNOW more... though I know that IS the noblest ambition... but I'd love to make them have a pleasanter time because of me... to have some little joy or happy thought that would never have existed if I hadn't been born.”― L.M. Montgomery, The Anne Stories (Anne of Green Gables, #1-3, 5, 7-8)
“That's a lovely idea, Diana," said Anne enthusiastically. "Living so that you beautify your name, even if it wasn't beautiful to begin with … making it stand in people's thoughts for something so lovely and pleasant that they never think of it by itself.”― L.M. Montgomery, The Anne Stories (Anne of Green Gables, #1-3, 5, 7-8)
“I don't want her to be like other people. There are too many other people around as it is.”― L.M. Montgomery, The Anne Stories (Anne of Green Gables, #1-3, 5, 7-8)
“And he says he doesn't believe all the heathen will be eternally lost. The idea! If they won't all the money we've been giving to Foreign Missions will be clean wasted, that's what!”― L.M. Montgomery, The Anne Stories (Anne of Green Gables, #1-3, 5, 7-8)
“Anne was always glad in the happiness of her friends; but it is sometimes a little lonely to be surrounded everywhere by a happiness that is not your own.”― L.M. Montgomery, The Anne Stories (Anne of Green Gables, #1-3, 5, 7-8)
“Little Jem had said 'Wow-ga' that morning. What were principalities and powers, the rise and fall of dynasties, the overthrow of Grit or Tory, compared with that miraculous occurrence?”― L.M. Montgomery, The Anne Stories (Anne of Green Gables, #1-3, 5, 7-8)
“I wish I could like the baby a little bit. It would make things easier. But I don't. I've heard people say that when you took care of a baby you got fond of it—but you don't—I don't, anyway.”― L.M. Montgomery, The Anne Stories (Anne of Green Gables, #1-3, 5, 7-8)
“One of my core fears is that someone would think I can’t handle as much as the next person. It’s fundamental to my understanding of myself for me to be the strong one, the capable one, the busy one, the one who can bail you out, not make a fuss, bring a meal, add a few more things to the list. For me, everything becomes a lifestyle. Everything is an addiction.”― Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way
“Left to our own devices, we sometimes choose the most locked up, dark versions of the story, but what a good friend does is turn on the lights, open the window, and remind us that there are a whole lot of ways to tell the same story.”― Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way
“Grace isn’t about having a second chance; grace is having so many chances that you could use them through all eternity and never come up empty. It’s when you finally realize that the other shoe isn’t going to drop, ever.”― Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way
“The young minister was a very good young man, and tried to do his duty; but he was dreadfully afraid of meeting old Mr. Scott, because he had been told that the old minister was very angry at being set aside, and would likely give him a sound drubbing, if he ever met him. One day the young minister was visiting the Crawfords in Markdale, when they suddenly heard old Mr. Scott's voice in the kitchen. The young minister turned pale as the dead, and implored Mrs. Crawford to hide him. But she couldn't get him out of the room, and all she could do was to hide him in the china closet. The young minister slipped into the china closet, and old Mr. Scott came into the room. He talked very nicely, and read, and prayed. They made very long prayers in those days, you know; and at the end of his prayer he said. 'Oh Lord, bless the poor young man hiding in the closet. Give him courage not to fear the face of man. Make him a burning and a shining light to this sadly abused congregation.”― L.M. Montgomery, The Anne Stories (Anne of Green Gables, #1-3, 5, 7-8)
“That’s why it’s hard, I think, to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. I love that line from the Bible, but it’s so incredibly difficult sometimes, because when you’ve got reason to rejoice, you forget what it’s like to mourn, even if you swear you never will. And because when you’re mourning, the fact that someone close to you is rejoicing seems like a personal affront.”― Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way
“Life hands us opportunities at every turn to get over ourselves, to get outside ourselves, to wake up from our own bad dreams and realize that really lovely things are happening all the time.”― Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way
“When you do what you love with people who love the same thing, something is born into your midst and begins to connect you.”― Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way
“The home team concept for me is not all about getting myself out of the doghouse with a whole bunch of people who need something from me. It’s about making sure that the people who deserve my energy and love and attention get it before it’s sucked up by people who have their own home teams.”― Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way
“When we, any of us who have been transformed by Christ, tell our own stories, we’re telling the story of who God is.”― Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way
“We’re the start of an amazing, dumbfounding history of survival that will only get better as the centuries pass.”― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales
“They sat on the edge of a brook and took off their shoes and let the water cut their feet off to the ankles with an exquisite cold razor.”― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales
“While we are in that condition of darkness, we cannot have true fellowship with our brother either--for we are not real with him, and no one can have fellowship with an unreal person.”― Roy Hession, The Calvary Road
“They blended religion and art and science because, at base, science is no more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain, and art is an interpretation of that miracle.”― Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales
“You lose a child and you do understand each other's grief at first, but if you get out of step with each other, it's all over. Suddenly each of you is alone.”― Alison Bruce, Cambridge Blue
“Having spent my life trying to fit the will of others, I was unable to distinguish between what I enjoyed and what I thought I should enjoy.”― David Sedaris, Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules
“Because Saleem was louder about Islam than I was, he was considered more of a man.”― Ali Eteraz, Children of Dust: A Memoir of Pakistan
“Your disapproval is noted. It is legitimate. You are welcome to disapprove. But you are not welcome to be ignorant, to look the other way, to be unable to perform—should you change your mind.”― John Irving, The Cider House Rules
“If you swear by that that is not, you are not forsworn: no more was this knight swearing by his honour, for he never had any; or if he had, he had sworn it away before ever he saw those pancakes or that mustard.”― William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of Shakespeare
“This wide and universal theatre
Presents more woeful pageants than the scene
Wherein we play in.”― William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of Shakespeare
“Marry, sir, she's the kitchen wench and all grease; and I know not what use to put her to but to make a lamp of her and run from her by her own light.”― William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of Shakespeare
“From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain and nourish all the world:
Else none at all in ought proves excellent.”― William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of Shakespeare
“God will judge us, Mr. Harris, by--by what we did to relieve the suffering of our fellow human beings. I don't think God cares what doctrine we embrace.”― Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone
“He that drinks all night, and is hanged betimes in the morning, may sleep the sounder all the next day.”― William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of Shakespeare
“(I was in love with Sherlock Holmes—I even had a fingerprinting kit that I used everywhere—proving my mother’s use of Tampax or that my sister once held the candy bowl.)”― Sarah Silverman, The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee
“I will always try to be happy. I don’t think people really understand the value of happiness until they know what it’s like to be in that very, very dark place. It’s not romantic. Not even a little.”― Sarah Silverman, The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee
“If you’ve ever heard that song by Beyoncé, “Single Ladies,” I am one of the people she’s singing about. I have to be, because she sings, “All the single ladies.” If she didn’t mean to include me in that, then she really needs to choose her words more carefully.”― Sarah Silverman, The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee
“Tis time to fear when tyrants seem to kiss.”― William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of Shakespeare
“Pride hath no other glass
To show itself but pride,”― William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of Shakespeare
“O, let not virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was;
For beauty, wit,
High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniating time.”― William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of Shakespeare
“There may be in the cup
A spider steep'd, and one may drink, depart,
And yet partake no venom, for his knowledge
Is not infected: but if one present
The abhorr'd ingredient to his eye, make known
How he hath drunk, he cracks his gorge, his sides,
With violent hefts. I have drunk, and seen the spider.”― William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of Shakespeare
“We’ve become too song focused, and in truth I believe that we need to be more worship focused. We’ve lost the ability to push aside the songs and replace them with twenty-five minutes of crying out, opening our hearts and heads with the raw worship of God who’s within us.”― Martin Smith, Delirious: My Journey with the Band, a Growing Family, and an Army of Historymakers
“Today there are some worship artists doing well, but when you buy their latest album you don’t expect any difference from the previous three. This doesn’t seem to do justice to the awesome creative power of almighty God. Serving up the same old, same old is never on the menu for God.”― Martin Smith, Delirious: My Journey with the Band, a Growing Family, and an Army of Historymakers
“At times the Christian scene is more dangerous. Sometimes, we have this Disneyland existence where we all have to pretend to be squeaky clean, yet reality’s not like that. Sometimes things are happening in secret that are not healthy: alcohol problems, pornography, people travelling too much or getting into trouble, but it all gets covered up even though it exists, behind closed doors with the 'Do Not Disturb' signs dangling on the outside. If I was hanging out at a mainstream party, I might not agree with what a certain singer of a certain secular band was up to, but at least what you saw was what you got. This sort of honesty was endearing.”― Martin Smith, Delirious: My Journey with the Band, a Growing Family, and an Army of Historymakers
“Unity transcends time, style, and numbers. When people hold hands across their own theologies, that unity can bring down the modern-day walls of Jericho.”― Martin Smith, Delirious: My Journey with the Band, a Growing Family, and an Army of Historymakers
“I did not really seek liberty. I am a civilised man. The civilised man knows there is no such thing. Only the younger and cruder nations put the word Liberty on their banner. There must always be a planned framework of security. And the essence of civilisation is that the way of life should be a moderate one.”― Agatha Christie, Destination Unknown
“Somehow we landed on the subject of Pim’s extreme diffidence. His modesty is a well-known fact, which even the stupidest person wouldn’t dream of questioning. All of a sudden Mrs. van Daan, who feels the need to bring herself into every conversation, remarked, “I’m very modest and retiring too, much more so than my husband!”― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
“The best remedy for those who are frightened, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere they can be alone, alone with the sky, nature and God.”― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
“I’d like to live that seemingly carefree and happy life for an evening, a few days, a week. At the end of that week I’d be exhausted, and would be grateful to the first person to talk to me about something meaningful.”― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
“She was crying because she was far from home, and who among us has never wanted to do that? There need be no other reason; just that. We cry for home, and for flowers on tables, and biscuits in little tins, and for mother; and we feel embarrassed, and foolish too, that we should be crying for such things; but we should not feel that way because all of us, in a sense, have strayed from home, and wish to return.”― Alexander McCall Smith, The Dog who Came in from the Cold
“We should all busy ourselves in being who we are, although many of us do not and spend so much time and energy being something else. We try to be what others want us to be, or what we ourselves want to be. And then we suddenly realise that our lives have shot past and we have not got round to being who we really”― Alexander McCall Smith, The Dog who Came in from the Cold
“That was the way the world was; it was composed of a few almost perfect people (ourselves); then there were a good many people who generally did their best but were not all that perfect (our friends and colleagues); and finally, there were a few rather nasty ones (our enemies and opponents).”― Alexander McCall Smith, The Double Comfort Safari Club
“He could not imagine being interested in that way in somebody like Mma Mateleke; how would one ever get to plant a kiss on such a person if she was always talking? It would be difficult to get one’s lips into contact with a mouth that was always opening and shutting to form words; that would surely be very distracting for a man, he thought, and might even discourage him to the point of disinclination, if that was the right word.”― Alexander McCall Smith, The Double Comfort Safari Club
“Coffee goes great with sudden death.”― Gillian Flynn, Dark Places
“I’m not good at things like that: haircuts or oil changes or dentist visits. When I moved into my bungalow, I spent the first three months swaddled in blankets because I couldn’t deal with getting the gas turned on. It’s been turned off three times in the past few years, because sometimes I can’t quite bring myself to write a check. I have trouble maintaining.”― Gillian Flynn, Dark Places
“As a child, I was constantly being sent on playdates with other kids—the shrinks insisted I interact with cohorts. That’s what my meeting with Lyle was like: those first loose, horrible ten minutes, when the grown-ups have left, and neither kid knows what the other one wants, so you stand there, near the TV they’ve told you to keep off, fiddling with the antenna.”― Gillian Flynn, Dark Places
“It was surprising that you could spend hours in the middle of the night pretending things were OK, and know in thirty seconds of daylight that that simply wasn’t so.”― Gillian Flynn, Dark Places
“And I don’t know, you’re at that age, if a bunch of grownups are telling you something or encouraging you, it just … it started to feel real. That Ben had molested me, because otherwise, why were all these adults trying to get me to say he had? And my parents would be all stern: It’s OK to tell the truth. It’s OK to tell the truth. And so you told the lie that they thought was the truth.”― Gillian Flynn, Dark Places
“I was as virtuously given as a gentleman need to be; virtuous enough; swore little; diced not above seven times a week; went to a bawdy-house once in a quarter—of an hour; paid money that I borrowed, three of four times; lived well and in good compass: and now I live out of all order, out of all compass.”― William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of Shakespeare
“And she began to weep, dropping her head onto her forearms and rocking backwards and forwards in that curious motion that is perhaps a subconscious attempt to mimic the movement that brings comfort to a tiny baby. That we should in moments of sorrow seek to return to a time when the harshness of the world could be forfended by the simple reassurances of our parents; that we should do that …”― Alexander McCall Smith, The Double Comfort Safari Club
Did you keep track of favorite quotes this year? If so, what are your favorites? Or are there any of this list that particularly strike you? Share in the comments!
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