“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
—Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“I assign myself no rank or any limit, and such an attitude is very much against the trend of the times. But my world has become one of infinite possibilities.”
—Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
“You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.”
—David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
“We accept the love we think we deserve.”
—Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
“Adversity is like a strong wind. It…tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be.”
—Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha
“Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open.”
—J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
“Nothing in the world is ever completely wrong. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.”
—Paulo Coehlo, Brida
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
“Be good, be young, be true! Evil is nothing but vanity, let us have the pride of good, and above all let us never despair.”
—Alexandre Dumas, fils, The Lady of the Camellias
“Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.”
—Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
“The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“People are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of.”
—Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
—Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
—John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”