Favorite Quotes

I love collecting quotes, both profound and hilarious. The list below is the product of years and is continually growing. I have everything from C.S. Lewis and Henri Nouwen to Winnie-the-Pooh and Disney/Pixar movies to my friends saying memorable things in this collection. So enjoy and if you have any good quotes that I should add, please comment below!


"A room without book is like a body without a soul." - G. K. Chesterton

"Faith sees the invisible, believes the incredible and receives the impossible." - Anonymous

"There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it." - Edith Wharton

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." - Albert Einstein

"You never need to be afraid to do what's right." - The Girl Who Became Queen (VeggieTales)

"Yesterday is history; tomorrow is mystery; today is a gift, that's why we call it the present" - Anonymous

"Thanks for nothing, you useless reptile" - Hiccup the Viking (How to Train Your Dragon)

Frozone: "You tell me where my suit is, woman! We are talking about the greater good!"
Honey: "Greater good? I am your wife! I'm the greatest good you are ever gonna get!" - The Incredibles

"I cannot live without books." - Thomas Jefferson

"Tis better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all." - Alfred Lord Tennyson

"A faithful friend is a strong defense; And he that hath found him hath found a treasure." - Louisa May Alcott

"Life's a climb.... but the view is great." - Travis Brody

"The most beautiful moments, I find, are the moments we walk by everyday. Those moments that we have closed our minds to. If we could only see the beauty in our everyday lives. If only we could see the beauty that’s still in this world." - Kyle D. Kurtz

"Sometimes people are beautiful. Not in looks. Not in what they say. Just in what they are." - Anonymous

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." - Jim Eliot

"We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken." - John Green

When the world says, "Give up," Hope whispers, "Try it one more time." - Author Unknown

"The kingdom and I aren't exactly 'sympatico' at the moment." - Flynn Ryder (Tangled)

"I didn't want to have to do this, but you leave me no choice. Here comes the smolder. *pause* This is kind of an off-day for me, this doesn't normally happen." - Flynn Ryder (Tangled)

"You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams." - Dr. Seuss

"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain." - Anonymous

"You can't get in the pool because you might get my water wet." - Uncle Gary

"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me." - C. S. Lewis

"Betsy returned to her chair, took off her coat and hat, opened her book and forgot the world again." - Betsy Ray

"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved." - Helen Keller

"Women are like tea bags. They don't know how strong they are until they get into hot water." - Eleanor Roosevelt

"The Holy Spirit literally comes to dwell in you and puts the very comfort of Christ inside you as you walk through your pain." - David Platt (Radical)

"We can rest confident in the fact that nothing will happen to us in this world apart from the gracious will of a sovereign God. Nothing." - David Platt (Radical)

Hermione: "Now if you two don't mind, I'm going to bed before either of you come up with another clever idea to get us killed - or worse, expelled."
Ron: "She needs to sort out her priorities!" - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

"Follow the spiders? Follow the spiders?! Why couldn't it be "follow the butterflies"?" - Ron Weasley (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)

“It is our choices, Harry, that show us who we truly are, far more than our abilities” - Dumbledore

“We must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy.” - Dumbledore

“It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies, but a great deal more to stand up to your friends.” - Dumbledore (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone)

"How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard." - Winnie the Pooh

"Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see." - Mark Twain

"We have something that Voldemort doesn't have - something worth fighting for." - Harry Potter (The Order of the Phoenix)

"You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices." - John Green (The Fault In Our Stars)

" 'Why must things change, Abba? Why does Jehovah allow us to care so deeply and then later require us to sacrifice?' 'Oh my precious lamb. Jehovah only asks that we sacrifice in order to prepare our hearts for the greater gifts He has to give.' " - Mesu Andrews (Love's Sacred Song)

"I am not what I ought to be; I am not what I wish to be; I am not what I hope to be. But blessed be God, I am not what I used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am." - John Newton

"Kindness is the language which even the deaf can hear and the blind can see." - Mark Twain

"Solitude matters, and for some people, it is the air that they breathe." - Susan Cain

"A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow." - William Shakespeare

"You may be tempted to think that your restlessness is the enemy, but believe me when I say that it is not. That restlessness is God's gift to you, that insatiable desire, that hunger of love, which has been planted deep within you. Without that restlessness you would never seek for true rest; instead, you'd accept stagnation." - Gregory Wolfe

"I have learned to kiss the wave that slams me into the rock of ages." - Charles Spurgeon

"Do not hesitate to love and to love deeply. You might be afraid of the pain that deep love can cause. When those you love deeply reject you, leave you, or die, your heart will be broken. But that should not hold you back from loving deeply. The pain that comes from deep love makes your love ever more fruitful. It is like a plow that breaks the ground to allow the seed to take root and grow into a strong plant. Every time you experience the pain of rejection, absence, or death, you are faced with a choice. You can become bitter and decide not to love again, or you can stand straight in your pain and let the soil on which you stand become richer and more able to give life to new seeds." - Henri J. Nouwen

Definition of kintsukuroi - (n.) (v. phr.) "to repair with gold"; the art of repairing pottery with gold or silver lacquer and understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken.

"When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something's suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful." - Barbara Bloom

"My life is a story about who God is and what He does in a human heart." - Shauna Niequist

“Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is an illusion.” - Brennan Manning

"How glorious is a human heart that trusts that it is loved." - Brennan Manning

"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." - Gandalf

"I have found that it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love. " - Gandalf

"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king." - J. R. R. Tolkien

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." - C. S. Lewis

“The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.” - C. S. Lewis

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” - C.S. Lewis

"Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.” - C. S. Lewis

“If God were small enough to be understood, He would not be big enough to be worshipped.” - Evelyn Underhill

Samwise: "I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come.
And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why.
But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?

Sam: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for.” - The Two Towers (Lord of the Rings)

"That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who leaves the world better than he found it...." - Robert Louis Stevenson

"The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering." - Ben Okri

"When things fall apart, the broken pieces allow all sorts of things to enter, and one of them is the presence of God." - Shauna Niequist

"I am a human being, not a human doing. Don't equate your self-worth with how well you do things in life. You aren't what you do. If you are what you do, then when you don't...you aren't." - Dr. Wayne Dyer

“For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.
For beautiful hair, let a child run their fingers through it once a day.
For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone.
People, more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed. Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of each of your arms.
As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself and the other for helping others.” - Sam Levenson

"Friendship is born in the moment when one person says to another: 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one.' " - C.S. Lewis

"True friends are two people who are comfortable sharing silence together." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend. " - Abraham Lincoln

"Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for awhile and leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever the same." - Unknown

"Friends are those rare people who ask us how we are and then wait to hear the answer." - Ed Cunningham

"The love of books is a love which requires neither justification, apology, nor defense." - J.A. Langford

"The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall; nations perish; civilizations grow old and die out; and, after an era of darkness, new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again, and yet live on, still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men's hearts of the hearts of men centuries dead." - Clarence Shepard Day

"Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers." - Charles William Eliot

"If the crowns of all the kingdoms of Europe were laid down at my feet in exchange for my books and my love of reading, I would spurn them all." - François Fénelon

"The habit of reading is the only enjoyment I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will be there to support you when all other resources are gone. It will be present to you when the energies of your body have fallen away from you. It will last you until your death. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live." - Anthony Trollope

“The real way of mending a man’s taste is not to denigrate his present favourites but to teach him how to enjoy something better." - C.S. Lewis (An Experiment in Criticism)

“But literary people are always looking for leisure and silence in which to read and do so with their whole attention. When they are denied such attentive and undisturbed reading even for a few days they feel impoverished." - C.S. Lewis (An Experiment in Criticism)

"It's never a waste of time to be present with another person. It's never a waste of time to listen to another person. It's never a waste of time to go out of your way, to ask questions, to care about another person. It's never a waste of time to grieve with another person. It is never a waste of time to rejoice with another person. It is never a waste of time to slow down and love deeply. This is the fabric that stretches and grows and enables moments like these to blow up with such joy and the defiant ability to say Yes and Thank You for life in the world with others. Care - attention, love, presence and thus also difficulty, hurt, catastrophe - is the microscopic tissue, the invisible thread that can house and open this kind of radical happiness, which momentarily flares up on days like these but, before and after, remains the secret of each moment of life." - Dr. Andrew DeCort

“Worrying is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn’t get you anywhere.” - Van Wilder

“To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.” - Tim Keller (The Meaning of Marriage)

"And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it." - Roald Dahl

"Reading is my favourite occupation, when I have leisure for it and books to read." - Anne Brontë

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” - Martin Luther King Jr.

"We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope." - Martin Luther King Jr.

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." - Martin Luther King Jr.

"Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude." - Martin Luther King Jr.

"We are all cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out." - Ray Bradbury

"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” - C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves)

"Lord Jesus Christ, I admit that I am weaker and more sinful than I ever before believed, but, through you, I am more loved and accepted than I ever dared hope." - Tim Keller

"Some people care too much, I think it's called love." - Winnie-the-Pooh

"Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart." - Winnie-the-Pooh

"If there ever comes a day when we can't be together, keep me in your heart, I'll stay there forever." - Winnie-the-Pooh

"Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend." - Winnie-the-Pooh

"Promise me you'll always remember: your'e braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem and smarter than you think." - Winnie-the-Pooh

Piglet: "How do you spell love?"
Pooh: "You don't spell it. You feel it."

"God loves you without condition or reservation and loves you this moment as you are and not as you should be." - Brennan Manning

"People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. " - John C. Maxwell

"When life is sweet, say thank you and celebrate. And when life is bitter, say thank you and grow." - Shauna Niequist

"Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day." - Henri Nouwen

"As you love deeply the ground of your heart will be broken more and more but you will rejoice in the abundance of the fruit will bear." - Henri Nouwen

"Did I offer peace today?
Did I bring a smile to someone's face?
Did I say words of healing?
Did I let go of my anger and resentment?
Did I forgive?
Did I love?
These are the real questions." - Henri Nouwen

"Be weird. Be random.
Be who you are
Because you never know
Who would love the person
You hide." - C.S. Lewis

"Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt of every situation you believe to be the will of God." - Jim Eliot

"You don't choose the length of your time. You do choose the depth of your life." - Mama Maggie Gobran

"The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page." - Saint Augustine

"Autumn is a second spring where every leaf is a flower." - Albert Camus

"If you want to travel fast, go alone. If you want to travel far, go together." - Unknown

"Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." - Maya Angelou

"Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for friendship, and it is far the best ending for one." - Oscar Wilde

"Laughter is the shortest distance between two people." - Victor Borge

"There's nothing worth the wear of winning but laughter, and the love of friends." - Hilaire Belloc

"Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light." - Helen Keller

"Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny." - C.S. Lewis

"Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God." - Corrie ten Boom

"I realized this week that I cannot do it all. So I will choose to do what I can, fabulously." - Clinton Kelly

"Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future." - Oscar Wilde

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." - Oscar Wilde

"We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde

"Be yourself. Everyone else is taken." - Oscar Wilde

"Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes." - Oscar Wilde

“You wake up on a winter morning and pull up the shade, and what lay there the evening before is no longer there--the sodden gray yard, the dog droppings, the tire tracks in the frozen mud, the broken lawn chair you forgot to take in last fall. All this has disappeared overnight, and what you look out on is not the snow of Narnia but the snow of home, which is no less shimmering and white as it falls. The earth is covered with it, and it is falling still in silence so deep that you can hear its silence. It is snow to be shoveled, to make driving even worse than usual, snow to be joked about and cursed at, but unless the child in you is entirely dead, it is snow, too, that can make the heart beat faster when it catches you by surprise that way, before your defenses are up. It is snow that can awaken memories of things more wonderful than anything you ever knew or dreamed.” ― Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale

"Everything is necessary that God sends our way; nothing can be necessary that he withholds." - John Newton

"My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition". - Indira Gandhi

“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you…I could walk through my garden forever.” - Alfred Lord Tennyson

"I saw that you were perfect, and so I loved you. Then I saw that you were not perfect and I loved you even more." - Angelita Lim

"The greatest need we have is not to do things but to believe things." - Oswald Chambers

"I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder." - G.K. Chesterton

"The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, and all the sweet serenity of books." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for another. The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to us the beauties of others.” - C. S. Lewis

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays. ” - Soren Kierkegaard

“There is always some truth behind 'just kidding', some curiosity behind 'just asking', some emotion behind 'none of my business', some wisdom behind 'no idea' and some pain behind 'no problem'.” - Unknown

“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch of a redeemed social condition; to know that one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it and the imagination to improvise.” - Sylvia Plath

"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages." - William Shakespeare

"I have only one superstition. I touch all the bases when I hit a home run." - Babe Ruth

"The trouble with weather forecasting is that it's right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it." - Patrick Young

"I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God's hands, that I still possess." - Martin Luther

"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The law says, "Do this," and it is never done. Grace says, "Believe in this," and everything is already done." - Martin Luther

"We did not walk into His light. He crashed into our darkness." - R. W. Griffin

"No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.” ― Charles Dickens

"God doesn't love us because of our worth, we are of worth because God loves us." - Martin Luther

"The password of the early Christians was joy, so let us still serve the Lord with joy. Joy is love, joy is prayer, joy is strength. God loves a person who gives joyfully, and if you give joyfully you always give more. A joyful heart is the result of a heart burning with love. Works of love are always works of joy. We don’t need to look for happiness: if we have love for others we’ll be given it. It is the gift of God." - Mother Teresa

"The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope." - Samuel Johnson

"Hope is the thing with feathers,
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without words,
And never stops at all." - Emily Dickinson

"The moment one gives close enough attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself." - Henry Miller

"Awe enables us to perceive in the world imitations of the divine; to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly." - G.K. Chesterton

"Some people come into your life as blessings. Some come into your life as lessons." - Mother Teresa

"While we're waiting for the answers, God gives us our friends." - Bob Goff (Love Does)

“Love is holy because it is like grace—the worthiness of its object is never really what matters." - Marilynne Robinson (Gilead)

"Perhaps because it is easy to believe in such moments that water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash." - Marilynne Robinson (Gilead)

"God is more present to you than you are to yourself." - Rev. Dr. DeGroat

"Friendship itself is a kind of affliction. I afflict my friends with the work of dealing with my shortcomings, my ignorance, and my vanity. I burden them and they burden me. Any friendship that is built on the value of never burdening one another is not much of a friendship. Burden-bearing is the essence of camaraderie. It is one of the holiest tasks one person can perform for another. We were not made to thrive in isolation." - Russ Ramsey (Struck)

"Women are made to be loved, not understood." - Oscar Wilde

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. " - Oscar Wilde

"Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde

"The moon looks wonderful in this warm evening light, just as a candle flame looks beautiful in the light of the morning. Light within light ... It seems to me to be the singular light within that great general light of existence." - Marilynne Robinson (Gilead)

"Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave - that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to nothing to honor them is to do great harm." - Marilynne Robinson (Gilead)

"Once we deeply trust that we ourselves are precious in God's eyes, we are able to recognize the preciousness of others and their unique places in God's heart." -Henri Nouwen

"It is a ... [person's] duty to have books. A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life." - Henry Ward Beecher

"If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship." - Louisa May Alcott

"Outside the will of God there is nothing I want, and inside the will of God there is nothing I fear." - A.W. Tozer

"You say your life is your own. ... But can you dare to ignore the chance that you are taking part in a gigantic drama under the orders of a divine Producer? Your cue may not come till the end of the play--it may be totally unimportant, a mere walking on part, but upon it may hang the issues of the play, if you do not give your cue to another player. The whole edifice may crumple. You as you, may not matter to anyone in the world, but you as a person in a particular place may matter unimaginably." - Agatha Christie (The Man from the Sea)

“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” - C. S. Lewis

• Edi

• E