If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?

-- Jalaluddin Rumi, Eldest

I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.

-- J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.

-- Socrates, Eragon

What will he then do unto his name whereby we are called? ...of these things have I asked.

-- Compton Gage, The Silence Between the Sighs

This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.

-- Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

If there is no sunshine today, I decide to be their sunlight.

-- Alin Sav, Light: A Radiant History from Creation to the Quantum Age

Literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity.

-- Anthony Powell, The Devil's Eyes

Things work out the way they're meant to

-- Danielle Steel, No Greater Love

I tried to contain myself... but I escaped!

-- Gary Paulsen, The View from the Seventh Layer

Happiness is the cure—a cheerful mind the preventive: cultivate both.

-- Charlotte Brontë, Villette

Even the names of the books gave me food for thought.

-- Virginia Woolf, How to Find Love in a Bookshop

I am passionate learner.

-- Lailah Gifty Akita, The Year in San Fernando

Life was wonderful, so filled with people and activities, with love and laughter.

-- Judith McNaught, Remember When

Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.

-- E.M. Forster, Fight Club

Eternity will not cause our memories to fade, it will force our hearts to accept the past.

-- Ross Caligiuri, Dreaming in the Shadows

Live or die, but don't poison everything.

-- Anne Sexton, The Road

Somebody has to start. Somebody has to step forward and do what is right, because it is right.

-- Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

He knows he will be born again, And start fresh anew.

-- Dejan Stojanovic, Circling: 1978-1987

Failure is a bend in the road, not the end of the road. Learn from failure and keep moving forward.

-- Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.

-- Jane Austen, Emma