Quotes by Lithuanian Authors - Page 2

I leapt eagerly into books. The characters’ lives were so much more interesting than the lonely heartbeat of my own.
Ruta Sepetys
Do not all theists insist that there can be no morality, no justice, honesty or fidelity without the belief in a Divine Power? Based upon fear and hope, such morality has always been a vile product, imbued partly with self-righteousness, partly with hypocrisy. As to truth, justice, and fidelity, who have been their brave exponents and daring proclaimers? Nearly always the godless ones: the Atheists; they lived, fought, and died for them. They knew that justice, truth, and fidelity are not conditioned in heaven, but that they are related to and interwoven with the tremendous changes going on in the social and material life of the human race; not fixed and eternal, but fluctuating, even as life itself.
Emma Goldman
Killers aren't always assassins. Sometimes, they don't even have blood on their hands.
Ruta Sepetys
Every nation has hidden history, countless stories preserved only by those who experienced them. Stories of war are often read and discussed worldwide by readers whose nations stood on opposite sides during battle. History divided us, but through reading we can be united in story, study, and remembrance. Books join us together as a global reading community, but more important, a global human community striving to learn from the past.
Ruta Sepetys
The more hideous the mental contortions, the greater the delight and bravos of the mass.
Emma Goldman
But wasn't there some sort of rule that said parents had to be smarter than their kids? It didn't seem fair.
Ruta Sepetys
I felt as if I were riding a pendulum. Just as I would swing into the abyss of hopelessness, the pendulum would swing back with some small goodness.
Ruta Sepetys
You can tell a lot about a society by what it fears.
Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius
When we can't dream any longer we die.
Emma Goldman
For others, in spite of myself, from myself.
Emmanuel Levinas
The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security of peace is about as logical as the claim that the most peaceful citizen is he who goes about heavily armed.
Emma Goldman
But all of the survivors had one thing in common, and that was love. They survived through love. Whether love of friend, love of country, love of God, or even love of enemy—love reveals to us the truly miraculous nature of the human spirit.
Ruta Sepetys
Revolting. If women were so careless to become pregnant at such a time, let women sort it out.
Ruta Sepetys
Every society has the criminals it deserves.
Emma Goldman
I don't want to see no dead body. Willie ain't in there. She put her walkin' shoes on. She gone to see the Lord.
Ruta Sepetys
War is catastrophe. It breaks families in irretrievable pieces. But those who are gone are not necessarily lost.
Ruta Sepetys
My husband, Andrius, says that evil will rule until good men or women choose to act. I believe him. This testimony was written to create an absolute record, to speak in a world where our voices have been extinguished. These writing may shock or horrify you, but that is not my intention. It is my greatest hope that the pages in this jar stir your deepest well of human compassion. I hope they prompt you to do something, to tell somone. Only then can we ensure that this kind of evil is never allowed to repeat itself.
Ruta Sepetys
Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves nobler, better, grander, more intelligent than those living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others. The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course, with the result that from early infancy the mind of the child is provided with blood-curdling stories about the Germans, the French, the Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reached manhood he is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself to defend his country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner. It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a greater army and navy, more battleships and ammunition.An army and navy represent the people's toys.
Emma Goldman
Patriotism ... is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.
Emma Goldman
I knew the legends of the birds. Seagulls were the souls of dead soldiers. Owls were the souls of women. Doves were the recently departed souls of unmarried girls.Was there a bird for the souls of people like me?
Ruta Sepetys
It grey louder. Louder. They were singing, singing at the top of their lungs. Andrius joined, and then my brother and the gray-haired man. And finally, the bald man joined in, singing out national anthem. 'Lithuania, land of heroes...
Ruta Sepetys
The motto should not be: Forgive one another rather understand one another.
Emma Goldman
They have a baby grand piano, but no one in the family plays. They have shelves of books they've never read, and the tension between the couples was so thick it nearly choked us.
Ruta Sepetys
The soldier stared at Ingrid. His silence was elastic, slowly curling a rope around her neck.
Ruta Sepetys
[M]an has as much liberty as he is willing to take.
Emma Goldman
She loved our dad in the inexplicable way that young women sometimes idolize men who greet their affection with casual indifference.
Daiva Markelis
We pushed to the edge of recklessness, yet I felt safe.
Ruta Sepetys
I do not believe in God, because I believe in man. Whatever his mistakes, man has for thousands of years been working to undo the botched job your god has made.
Emma Goldman
Man has bought brains but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit but he has been utterly helpless before love. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king.
Emma Goldman
‎Civilization has been a continuous struggle of the individual or of groups of individuals against the State and even against "society," that is, against the majority subdued and hypnotized by the State and State worship.
Emma Goldman
An amateur is an artist who supports himself with outside jobs which enable him to paint. A professional is someone whose wife works to enable him to paint.
Ben Shahn
In 1991, after fifty years of brutal occupation, the three Baltic countries regained their independence, peacefully and with dignity. They chose hope over hate and showed the world that even through the darkest night, there is light. These three tiny nations have taught us that love is the most powerful army. Whether love of a friend, love of country, love of God, or even love of enemy- love reveals to us the truly miraculous nature of the human spirit.
Ruta Sepetys
To approach the Other in conversation is to welcome his expression, in which at each instant he overflows the idea a thought would carry away from it. It is therefore to receive from the Other beyond the capacity of the I, which means exactly: to have the idea of infinity. But this also means: to be taught. The relation with the Other, or Conversation, is a non-allergic relation, an ethical relation; but inasmuch as it is welcomed this conversation is a teaching. Teaching is not reducible to maieutics; it comes from the exterior and brings me more than I contain. In its non-violent transitivity the very epiphany of the face is produced.
Emmanuel Levinas
All the little duckies with their heads in the waterHeads in the waterAll the little duckies with their heads in the waterOh, such sweet little duckies.
Ruta Sepetys
Mother was comfort. Mother was home. A girl who lost her mother was suddenly a tiny boat on an angry ocean. Some boats eventually floated ashore. And some boats, like me, seemed to float farther and farther from land
Ruta Sepetys
Unless it was Cokie, gifts from men weren't free.
Ruta Sepetys
The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison.
Ann Wigmore
Well, I don't know, Lina. But let's just say I've met a lot of dead people.
Ruta Sepetys
But because humans are intensely social animals, they also faced a recurring set of crucial social evolutionary challenges. These evolutionary challenges include (1) evading physical harm, (2) avoiding disease, (3) making friends, (4) gaining status, (5) attracting a mate, (6) keeping that mate, and (7) caring for family.
Vladas Griskevicius
What if this is a horrible mistake?" I croaked. "Oh, it'll be horrible fine, just a bunch of pretentious rich people with shelves of expensive books they've never read.
Ruta Sepetys
It requires something more than personal experience to gain a philosophy or point of view from any specific event. It is the quality of our response to the event and our capacity to enter into the lives of others that help us to make their lives and experiences our own. In my own case my convictions have derived and developed from events in the lives of others as well as from my own experience. What I have seen meted out to others by authority and repression, economic and political, transcends anything I myself may have endured.
Emma Goldman
There's a saying, 'Death hath a thousand doors to let out life; I shall find one.' But the children. That's what I struggle with.' He shook his head. 'Why the children?
Ruta Sepetys
What did I want? I wanted the war to be over so I could ask her out.
Ruta Sepetys
We sat and drank in silence. It was something I appreciated about Jesse. He didn't feel the need to fill every moment with talk or some sort of silly exchange.
Ruta Sepetys
...we're dealing with two devils who both want to rule hell.
Ruta Sepetys
I became good at pretending. I became so good that after a while the lines blurred between my truth and fiction. And sometimes, when I did a really good job of pretending, I even fooled myself.
Ruta Sepetys
Soon we will not need people anymore, as everything will be done by automatons, including bringing up children.
Andrius B. Tapinas
We'd be trying to touch the sky from the bottom of the ocean. I realize that if we boosted one another, maybe we'd get a little closer.
Ruta Sepetys
Tadas was sent to the principal today," announced Jonas at dinner. He wedged a huge piece of sausage into his small mouth."Why?" I asked."Because he talked about hell," sputtered Jonas, juice from the plump sausage dribbling down his chin."Jonas, don't speak with your mouth full. Take smaller pieces," scolded Mother."Sorry," said Jonas with his moth stuffed. "It's good." He finished chewing. I took a bite of sausage. It was warm and the skin was deliciously salty."Tadas told one of the girls that hell is the worst place ever and there's no escape for all eternity.""Now why would Tadas be talking of hell?" asked Papa, reaching for the vegetables."Because his father told him that if Stalin comes to Lithuania, we'll all end up there.
Ruta Sepetys
No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.
Emma Goldman
What determines how we remember history and which elements are preserved and penetrate the collective consciousness? If historical novels stir your interest, pursue the facts, history, memories, and personal testimonies available. These are the shoulders that historical fiction sits upon. When the survivors are gone we must not let the truth disappear with them. Please, give them a voice.
Ruta Sepetys
Crime is naught but misdirected energy.
Emma Goldman
Consciously or unconsciously, most theists see in gods and devils, heaven and hell, reward and punishment, a whip to lash the people into obedience, meekness and contentment.... The philosophy of atheism expresses the expansion and growth of the human mind. The philosophy of theism, if we can call it a philosophy, is static and fixed.
Emma Goldman
Our side has agents. Their side has spies.
Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius
They got everything money can buy, their bank accounts are fat, but they ain't happy. They ain't ever gonna be happy. You know why? They soul broke. And money can't fix that, no sir.
Ruta Sepetys
Just when you think this war has taken everything you loved, you meet someone and realize that somehow you still have more to give.
Ruta Sepetys
My arm began moving, turning the invisible crank of Death's music box. Somewhere inside, I didn't want the melody to end.
Ruta Sepetys
Ask for work. If they don't give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.
Emma Goldman
Sometimes there is such beauty in awkwardness.
Ruta Sepetys
Light fell, and so did my confidence.
Ruta Sepetys