Quotes by Canadian Authors - Page 140

People want what was best about the world.
Emily St. John Mandel
I should at least have learned more about how it had come to be that Rema had abandoned her mother, before I asked her to marry - and hopefully not abandon - me. But I saw Rema all prismatically, all fractured and reconstituted as if seen in the valley of an unshined silver spoon and actually I'm glad love does that, I shouldn't complain about love or love's perspective - distorted or no, to feel superior to it would be wrong, as if there were some better way of seeing.
Rivka Galchen
Not lovelier. But a different kind of loveliness. There are so many kinds of loveliness.
L.M. Montgomery
Doesn't it make you feel kind of awesome that the world is beautiful for no other apparent reason that that it is? Like beauty has its own secret reason. It doesn't need human eyes to notice. It just wants to be glorious and unbelievable.
Martine Leavitt
...being beautiful has nothing to do with sex. You have to be beautiful in here, too.” he says, pressing his fist against his heart and then his head.
Karina Halle
Why hoard away so many back-issues of People Magazine? Fashion magazines are just empty promises. You can go bankrupt blowing all your cash on expensive beauty products, but the only way you’ll ever look just like the people on those glossy front covers is if you know how to use computer editing software for photographs. Besides, people who think they are ugly, are never really all that ugly anyway. People who think they are pretty, are rarely ever all that pretty.
Rebecca McNutt
for you to see beauty heredoes not meanthere is beauty in meit means there is beauty rootedso deep within youyou can’t help butsee it everywhere
Rupi Kaur
One could get bored even with beauty when one was constantly surrounded by it.
Morgan Rhodes
After having grown up surrounded by so much manufactured beauty, Amara had come to want something different. Something that wasn't necessarily beautiful. Something imperfect, interesting, and perhaps even ugly.
Morgan Rhodes
I won’t desecrate beauty with cynicism anymore. I won’t confuse critical thinking with a critical spirit, and I will practice, painfully, over and over, patience and peace until my gentle answers turn away even my own wrath.
Sarah Bessey
I stopped caring about the appearance of the physical shell that is my body. Instead, I concerned myself only with the purifying and beautifying of my soul. I began feeding my heart all the good things: love, hope, courage and belief. I began caring for myself. I began loving myself. I began BEING MYSELF. The power of that was so great that I started to feel healthier, stronger, more energetic. I became healthier, stronger and more energetic and I CONTINUE to become healthier, stronger and more energetic. I came out of hiding, I started talking more, smiling more. I became braver, I felt safer, I built more trust and I took more risks. I risked reaching out, I asked for help from the universe, I asked for help from others, I began searching and grabbing at anything to serve this new purpose: this new path. I opened my mind. I began challenging everything, my thinking, my perspectives. Everything! It's not easy. There were and are moments where everything seems inside out and upside down. But! Amidst this chaos, I found BEAUTY. Beauty in everything around me, beauty in other people and even beauty in ME. Each and every day I feel more beauty. That openness, that growing awareness. That presence in the moment. The depth of being present. The depth of my experiences. The meaning!! Finally, I am learning to live! I am ALIVE! This is my life! I am seizing it. It is mine. I am full of INFINITE POTENTIAL. What a beautiful, wonderful, amazing thing to discover! I am beautiful!
Akiroq Brost
This boy," he said, indicating the paintings with one sweep of his arms, "was romantic. He thought that it was beauty that bound everything together. And for him it was true. Life had been beautiful for him. He was very young. He knew very little of life. He saw beauty but he did not feel any true passion. How could he? He did not know. He had not really encountered the force of beauty's opposite.""Are you more cynical now, then?" she asked him."Cynical," he frowned, "No, not that. I know that there is an ugly side of life-and not just human life. I know that everything is not simply beautiful. I am not a romantic as this boy was. But I am not a cynic either. There is something enduring in all of life, Anne, something tough. Something. Something terribly weak yet incredibly powerful...
Mary Balogh
Everyone is pretty enough in the dark,”she whispered.“No, they are not.” He kissed her beforepulling back abruptly, willing himself to stop.
Sylvain Reynard
Thanks to Karen Connelly who read earlier versions of this manuscript and to Ronald Hatch my editor and publisher.
Nancy Holmes
Why did people assume that the beautiful among them needed nothing but their beauty to bring them happiness? That behind the beauty there was nothing but an empty shell, insensitive shell?
Mary Balogh
I felt like I was seeing Shannon through a new lens, undistracted by Jennifer's nuclear glow. I could see how pretty she really was, how kind her eyes were.
Kenneth Oppel
The ugliness at the heart of beauty. Is there always ugliness, do you suppose? Even when the object is very, very beautiful?
Mary Balogh
This is the truth: we all desire to conquer the comely one, because it affirms our own worth. Speaking for the men of the world, we want to own the beauty of the woman we're fucking. We want to grasp that beauty, tightly in our greedy little fingers, to well and truly possess it, to make it ours. We want to do this as the woman shines her way through an orgasm. That's perfection. And while I can't speak for women, I imagine that they-whether they admit it or not-want the same thing: to possess the man, to own his rough handsomeness, if only for a few seconds.
Andrew Davidson
Pain and beauty, our constant bedfellows
Nick Bantock
Oh, Mr. Cuthbert," she whispered, that place we came through--that white place--what was it?""Well now, you must mean the Avenue," said Matthew after a few moments' profound reflection. "It is a kind of pretty place.""Pretty? Oh, PRETTY doesn't seem the right word to use. Nor beautiful, either. They don't go far enough. Oh, it was wonderful--wonderful. It's the first thing I ever saw that couldn't be improved upon by imagination. It just satisfies me here"--she put one hand on her breast--"it made a queer funny ache and yet it was a pleasant ache. Did you ever have an ache like that, Mr. Cuthbert?""Well now, I just can't recollect that I ever had.""I have it lots of time--whenever I see anything royally beautiful. But they shouldn't call that lovely place the Avenue. There is no meaning in a name like that. They should call it--let me see--the White Way of Delight. Isn't that a nice imaginative name?
L.M. Montgomery
Viktor was swinging a leather duffle and wearing a black Adidas tracksuit and his favorite brown UGG slippers with a hole in the toe."Worn and old, just like Viv," he'd say when Frankie made fun of them, and then his wife would swat him on the arm. But Frankie knew he was just joking, because Viveka was the type of woman you wished was in a magazine just so you could stare at her violet-colored eyes and shiny black hair without being called a stalker or a freak.
Lisi Harrison
When life is not coming up rosesLook to the weedsand find the beauty hidden within them.
L.F.Young
I prefer to believe the opposite - that there is always an indestructible beauty at the heart of darkness.
Mary Balogh
I am quite likely to re-act to the opposite extreme - to feel rapturously that the world is beautiful and mere existence something to thank God for. I suppose our 'blues' are the price we have to pay for our temperament. 'The gods don't allow us to be in their debt.' They give us sensitiveness to beauty in all its forms but the shadow of the gift goes with it.
L.M. Montgomery
She saw how he was staring at it, the bright red hue beneath her bonnet. She could not bear to see the way he was looking at her—right through her—without seeing her. He did not see a woman. He did not see Jane, the woman he had been so passionate with two days before. He saw… Jane swallowed hard and lookedaway, hating the weakness of her spirit. She was more than this, a wilting flower. She was stronger than this. But damn it, this hurt.It hurt because he was the man responsible for making her burn. For making her feel like a woman. It hurt because it had been a trick. An illusion. And it hurt most of all because he did not see her, the woman she was behind the unfashionable spectacles and garish hair.
Charlotte Featherstone
To say she is only a woman is to say a violin is a piece of wood with strings, and Dante is mere ink printed on paper.
Bruce Crown
A community is only being created when its members accept that they are not going to achieve great things, that they are not going to be heroes, but simply live each day with new hope, like children, in wonderment as the sun rises and in thanksgiving as it sets. Community is only being created when they have recognized that the greatness of man is to accept his insignificance, his human condition and his earth, and to thank God for having put in a finite body the seeds of eternity which are visible in small and daily gestures of love and forgiveness. The beauty of man is in this fidelity to the wonder of each day.
Jean Vanier
And if you can’t see anything beautiful about yourself, get a better mirror. Look a little closer. Stare a little longer. Because there’s something inside you that made you keep trying despite everyone who told you to quit.
Shane L. Koyczan
If a rainbow makes a sound, or a flower as it grows, that was the sound of her laughter.
William Paul Young
You built your walls too, she tells him. So I have my wall. She says it glittering in a beauty he cannot stand. She with her beautiful clothes with her pale face that laughs at everyone who smiles at her...
Michael Ondaatje
Secrets are generally terrible. Beauty is not hidden--only ugliness and deformity.
L.M. Montgomery
...I don't just wish you rain, Beloved - I wish you the beauty of storms...
John Geddes
Which would you rather be if you had the choice--divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good?
L.M. Montgomery
Better to be a catalyst for change than a martyr for lies.
Karina Halle
the knowledge that change can be frightening, that responsibility can, but that the answer to that is not refusing to change or to accept responsibility.
Jo Walton
Sometimes when you try to change the world, the world changes you!
Alex Haditaghi
You cannot stay the way you are and go with God.
Henry T. Blackaby
Alecto, have you noticed how downhill this little island is becoming?” Mandy questioned sadly. “All these organic food stores and yoga studios and cellular phone towers… Cape Breton was one of the only places left where it still had that nostalgic small town atmosphere but now… I’ve only been away for a year, how could things have changed so quickly? I mean, how can the world accept it?”“C'est la vie,” said Alecto, looking extremely tired as he stared out the window at the late November maple keys fluttering down from vibrantly red trees lining the streets on either side of the windshield.
Rebecca McNutt
From surfeit to loss is a short line.
Carol Shields
It will take as long as it takes. Your work is to take the time and make the space. Everything else is beyond your influence.
Vironika Tugaleva
We all see very clearly in others tendencies which we, ourselves, have overcome. The older and wiser we grow, the more we can see the arrogance of youth. The more authentic we become, the more we can see the lies of insecurity. The more vulnerable we allow ourselves to be, the more we see the dangerous symptoms of unexpressed emotions. There is no finish line to learning. There is no point where we're done growing, and all we will ever do is look down upon others who are behind us. No one is ever at the top. We are all growing at our own rates, and no matter how terrible or how enlightened we fancy ourselves to be today, the future will be sure to give us a different perspective. There is really no use in comparing yourself to others. There will always be someone ahead and someone behind, and there will be dozens (if not hundreds) of different scales and gradients to be behind and ahead on. To be number one is never final. It is and always will be a momentary, fleeting instant. But to be a growing version of yourself? That, you can be. You can be that every single day.
Vironika Tugaleva
Change is not something you do. Change is something you allow.
Vironika Tugaleva
Active-awareness combined with daily active-effort will compound to make a significant difference.
Akiroq Brost
A butterfly does not wonder how it can stop being a caterpillar. It simply feels some feeling from within that tells it: isolate yourself in this cocoon and grow within it. It trusts that feeling. When it comes out, it is radiant and beautiful. All the little bug did was follow its nature. You are no different.
Vironika Tugaleva
Self-acceptance can be daunting at first, but it is made easier with the understanding that self-acceptance is not hinged on perfection. Self-acceptance is the starting point.
Akiroq Brost
You want to fix yourself, change yourself, become someone better. But what about who you already are? You want to craft a mask to wear—something to cover your face. But you already have a face. You are already something. Your task, as a human being, is not self-augmentation, but self-discovery. Look at yourself with curiosity. Let yourself explore your interests. Delve into your talents. Face your fears. Accept your faults, and give yourself unconditional love.By learning to explore yourself, you will naturally become the best version of yourself. Of course, you invent your life, but you do not invent your passions. Some things, you must create, and others you must discover.Learn to be curious about yourself. Then, you will be on the right path.
Vironika Tugaleva
The most profound personal growth does not happen while reading a book or meditating on a mat. It happens in the throes of conflict—when you are angry, afraid, frustrated. It happens when you are doing the same old thing and you suddenly realize that you have a choice.
Vironika Tugaleva
Change, I've come to understand, rises up like nausea: the promise of relief is what makes it bearable.
Durga Chew-Bose
Tony and Peg have two kids, Terry-Lynn and Harvey, both of whom are enrolled in so many extracurricular and afterschool clubs that they hardly ever see their parents. If Terry-Lynn is in Girl Guides, she doesn’t have to see Peg inviting the Purolator man in for “a cup of coffee”. If Harvey is in the anime drawing club, he doesn’t have to see Peg kissing Mr. Cooper from across the street, even if all the other neighbours secretly know what’s going on. Tony has no idea, all he knows is that Peg isn’t the same Peg he married back in 2003. All he knows is that she’s changed a great deal, and not for the better, like a beautiful butterfly regressing back into a devouring, ugly caterpillar in the span of only a couple of months.
Rebecca McNutt
The researchers argued that an orderly environment fosters a sense of responsibility not so much by deterrence (since Groningen police rarely penalize litterers) as by the signaling of a social norm: This is the kind of place where people obey the rules.
Steven Pinker
Changes ain't totally pleasant but they're excellent things... Two years is about long enough for things to stay exactly the same. If they stayed put any longer they might grow mossy.
L.M. Montgomery
Change is never convenient. I'm talking about acceptance here. Don't be misguided into thinking change is going to be easy. If you're facing change then you're challenging a norm, your norm. You've adapted to that and now it's being challenged. It's being turned inside out and upside down. You may feel that can't quite find your footing. It's all foreign. You may feel lost in it, quite unsure of yourself, unsure of what to do, or how to do it. Don't worry. Everything new was once like this, and you made it through. You'll find a way. Have faith. Keep hope in your heart. If you want to get to the other side of anything you need to work through and endure change. It can be awkward and uncomfortable. Change is never comfortable. It takes time and patience. It takes self-love and acceptance. It takes grace and self-forgiveness. Take it one step at a time. Break it down. You'll make it to the other side.
Akiroq Brost
I can't change what's happened to me in my life, or make what's not occurred take place. But I can't say I like it, or accept it, or believe it's for the best. I don't and never shall, not even if I'm damned for it.
Margaret Laurence
But nothing is said of the closeness between two people: how they grew in the shade of each other's presence. No one speaks of that exchange of gift and character --- the way a person took on and recognized in himself the smile of a lover. Individuals are seen only in the context of these swirling social tides.
Michael Ondaatje
I am choosing to flow with the current of life rather than lying in a tide pool experiencing the same things again and again.
Marilyn Barnicke Belleghem
It was the challenge of life too, was it not? People could never be fully understood. They were ever changing, different people at different times and under different circumstances and influences. And always growing, always creating themselves anew.How impossible it was to know another human being.How impossible to know even oneself.
Mary Balogh
I am resolutely opposed to all innovation, all change, but I am determined to understand what’s happening. Because I don’t choose just to sit and let the juggernaut roll over me. Many people seem to think that if you talk about something recent, you’re in favor of it. The exact opposite is true in my case. Anything I talk about is almost certainly something I’m resolutely against. And it seems to me the best way to oppose it is to understand it. And then you know where to turn off the buttons.
Marshall McLuhan
Changes come all the time. Just as soon as things get really nice they change,' she said with a sigh.
L.M. Montgomery
One age ends, and another begins. It is the way of things. But, it doesn't happen all at once.
Derek Donais
Which came first: the change-ready company or the change-ready employee?
Lorii Myers