Just Quotes (Pt. 1)
6 books and some highlights later…
— From Dayo, as she experiences and learns. Welcome to The Mind Palace!
I read books throughout last week, both fiction and non-fiction.
So, unsurprisingly, my head was full of phrases I found interesting or scathing (check the end to see).
So, here are 18 quotes grouped into fiction or non-fiction, and then by sources. Enjoy!
Fiction
Book: Thief of Corinth by Tessa Afshar
The book: Thief of Corinth is a historical Christian fiction about freedom. Literally. A teenage girl, Ariadne, ran away from her grandfather’s home into bustling yet dangerous Corinth. Then of course, the real freedom.
Quotes
- Lead character, Ariadne, in Thief of Corinth on the difference between courage and stupidity:
“There is a thin line between courage and stupidity, and I crossed it with a frequency that pointed to a lack of wit rather than a surfeit of bravery.”
- Ariadne on the cold nature of wisdom:
“The problem with wisdom is that it is devoid of comfort. It cannot mend an aching heart no matter how much sense it contains.”
- On how to win by Ariadne:
“Arrogance would not fuel my steps today. I would run with resolve. Determination drove me that afternoon… I lost awareness of whether I was ahead or behind. My world narrowed to that one post, the slender painted column that indicated the end of the race.”
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Book: Daughter of Rome by Tessa Afshar
The book: “Daughter of Rome is both an emotive love story [about Aquila and Priscilla] and an immersive journey through first-century Rome and Corinth.”
Quotes
- Aquila on choosing to see pain as a meaningful means to a promised good end:
“I am here because you will use this pain to forge me and shape me and complete me. I am here because you have begun a good work in me, and you are determined to complete it. This is not about the trouble I have known through the years, but about the God who is with me in the trouble. Yeshua. I am yours. Do with me what you will.”
- Aquila on the firmness and dedication of love:
“You will trust me, one day, when I tell you that you are my beloved, more precious to me than my life. And the past has no power to change that.”
- Mary, a minor character, on the grand benefit of small acts of kindness:
“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts such as yours.”
Non-fiction
Book: Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon
The book: A book for people, not just creatives who hate the very idea of self-promotion.
Quotes
- Austin Kleon on creativity:
“…good work isn’t created in a vacuum, and … creativity is always, in some sense, a collaboration, the result of a mind connected to other minds….
“Being a valuable part of a scenius is not necessarily about how smart or talented you are, but about what you have to contribute — the ideas you share, the quality of the connections you make, and the conversations you start. If we forget about genius and think more about how we can nurture and contribute to a scenius, we can adjust our own expectations and the expectations of the worlds we want to accept us.”
- The power of stories and narratives as described by Austin Kleon:
“The stories you tell about the work you do have a huge effect on how people feel and what they understand about your work, and how people feel and what they understand about your work effects how they value it.”
- Austin Kleon on fear:
“Fear is just imagination taking a wrong turn.”
- Clay Shirky in Cognitive Surplus on being an amateur vs a professional:
“…you can move from mediocre to good in increments. The real gap is between doing nothing and doing something.”
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Book: A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis
The book: A collection of C. S. Lewis’s reflections on the experience of bereavement following the death of his wife, Joy Davidman, A Grief Observed probes the “mad midnight moments” of Lewis’ mourning and loss.
Quotes
- The threshold of belief by C. S. Lewis :
“You can never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.”
- C. S. Lewis on our ironic inability to appreciate things when we desperately want them:
“You can’t see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears. You can’t, in most things, get what you want if you want it too desperately: anyway, you can’t get the best out of it… Delicious drinks are wasted on a really ravenous thirst.”
- The inescapable distortion of human reality by C. S. Lewis.
“Five senses; an incurably abstract intellect; a haphazardly selective memory; a set of preconceptions and assumptions so numerous that I can never examine more than a minority of them — never become even conscious of them all. How much of total reality can such an apparatus let through?”
🐻🐻
Book: Finding Me by Viola Davis
The book: A memoir by Viola Davis, ‘Finding Me is a story of hope, survival and acceptance of oneself.’
Quotes
- Russian playwright and one of the greatest writers of all time, Anton Chekhov, describes the need to believe in something as humans:
“I think human beings must have faith or must look for faith, otherwise our life is empty, empty. To live and not to know why the cranes fly, why children are born, why there are stars in the sky. You must know why you are alive, or else everything is nonsense, just blowing in the wind.”
- Acclaimed actress and producer, Viola Davis, on the place of morals in the hierarchy of living:
“When you’re clutching to live, morals go out the window.”
🐻🐻
Book: The Feminist Lie: It Was Never About Equality by Bob Lewis
The book: “This book is a sobering true story of tragedy, suicide, and murder directly caused by feminism… it includes investigative journalism that proves feminism was never about equality. The reality is that feminism doesn’t just victimize men. It also victimizes women, children, families, and communities.”
Quotes
The foundation beliefs of feminism:
“At its most basic level, feminism began as a rebellion against marriage and family values. Early feminists believed that once married, a woman’s identity disappeared. To gain sympathy, many early feminists reframed the institution of marriage as slavery. To support their view, they pointed out that women didn’t have many of the rights society given to men. While on the surface this appears to be a legitimate complaint. Upon closer inspection, it completely falls apart.”
On countering feminism:
“…even if you counter them, feminist allies may still attack you … by reframing disagreement as hate speech.”
What feminism truly is according to Bob Lewis:
“As long as men remain the majority of casualties, feminists don’t care… Feminism isn’t really about equality, it’s about female superiority.”
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