Quotes on Ifs

Are you thankful for not being young?' 'Yes, sir. If I was young, it would all have to be gone through again, and the end would be a weary way off, don't you see?

To feed your Muse, then, you should always have been hungry about life since you were a child. If not, it is a little late to start.

If all those around you believe some particular thing, you will soon be tempted to share in that belief.

Writing is hard work. But if you want to become a writer you will become one. Nothing will stop you.

I want us to be together without bothering about ourselves- to be really together because we ARE together, as if it were a phenomenon, not a thing we have to maintain by our own effort.

If people reach perfection they vanish, you know.

Zaphod felt he was teetering on the edge of madness and wondered if he shouldn't just jump over and have done with it.

Down the winding cavern we groped our tedious way, till a void boundless as the nether sky appeared beneath us, and we held by the roots of trees and hung over this immensity; but I said: if you please we will commit ourselves to this void and see whether providence is here also.

As a matter of fact she does not know to this day if those words were spoken, or if he only caught her, wound his arms around her, held her so tightly, with such continual, changing pressures that it seemed more than two arms were needed, that she was surrounded by him, his body strong and light, demanding and renouncing all at once, as if he was telling her she was wrong to give up on him, everything was possible, but then again that she was not wrong, he meant to stam himself on her and go.

The nurses, I have already learned, are the ones who give us the answers we’re desperate for. Unlike the doctors, who fidget like they need to be somewhere else, the nurses patiently answer us as if we are the first set of parents to ever have this kind of meeting with them, instead of the thousandth.

If you find that not many of the things you asked for have come, and not perhaps quite so many as sometimes, remember that this Christmas all over the world there are a terrible number of poor and starving people.

If it's still in your mind, it is still in your heart.

Don't ask permission. If it does not work, you can apologize later.

One day in the afternoon of the world, glum death will come and sit in you, and when you get up to walk, you will be as glum as death, but if you're lucky, this will only make the fun better and the love greater.

It's starts out young- you try not be different just to survive- you try to be just like everyone else- anonymity becomes reflexive- and then one day you wake up and you've become all those other people- the others- the something you aren't. And you wonder if you can ever be what it is you really are. Or you wonder if it's too late to find out.

They say: sufferings are misfortunes," said Pierre. 'But if at once this minute, I was asked, would I remain what I was before I was taken prisoner, or go through it all again, I should say, for God's sake let me rather be a prisoner and erat horseflesh again. We imagine that as soon as we are torn out of our habitual path all is over, but it is only the beginning of something new and good. As long as there is life, there is happiness. There is a great deal, a great deal before us.

If he doesn't stop trying to save your life he's going to kill you.

It's like many other things in life, Ellie. You keep on the path and all's well. You get off it and the next thing you know you're lost if you're not lucky.

And we must fight back! President Snow says he's sending us a message? Well, I have one for him. You can torture us and bomb us and burn our districts to the ground, but do you see that? Fire is catching! And if we burn, you burn with us!

If you live each day as it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right

If you can think of times in your life that you’ve treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely loved more than life itself. And I think it’s probably possible to achieve that. I think part of the job we’re here for is to learn how to do it