Zoë Akins Quotes

The success haters. ... That's what I call them—the people who have never got what they want and turned sour on everybody who has. The world's full of them. ... As soon as you've made good they begin to watch for you to fail. ...

Shutting one's eyes is an art, my dear. I suppose there's no use trying to make you see that—but that's the only way one can stay married.

Work alone qualifies us for life, Sentoni. It is much more exquisite to be blown from the tree as a flower than to be shaken down as a shriveled and bitter fruit.

Indifferent to all the fun of chance </br> I watched black spiders of inertia spin </br> The far-flung web which I was strangling in.

Forgetting is the cost </br> Of living cheerfully.

My life is like water that has gone over the dam and turned no mill wheels. Here I am, not happy, but not unhappy, as my days run on to the sea, idly—but not too swiftly—for I love living.

Like a fool I thought I was the arbiter of her destiny; and all the time Fate had happier plans for her.

And they shall know that in the ordering </br> Of every world to come the law shall read </br> That he who dares be lawless wears the wing Of bird and prophet and his light shall lead </br> On through the darkness to eventual light, </br> To undiscovered wealth, to newer need. ...

To accuse is so easy that it is infamous to do so where proof is impossible!

The Greeks had a word for it.

It's all right to tell a wife the brutal truth, but you've got to go sort of easy with your lady-love.

This world is a very unsafe place. It's all shifting sands, Ned. Shifting sands and changing winds.

T<small>ILLERTON</small>: "To him that hath it shall be given—" She hath ... that's all. That's greatness. P<small>RESCOTT</small>: One sort of greatness, maybe. T<small>ILLERTON</small>: Even the great can have only their own sort of greatness. P<small>RESCOTT</small>: And it's often only that they're great sponges. T<small>ILLERTON</small>: Often, yes, or great roses for whose blooming the trees have been pruned and stripped. But they make the beauty of the world and that's enough.

No one can ever help loving anyone.

... there's a great strangeness about love. ... Yes, I'm very sure that love is the strangest thing in the world—much stranger than death—or—or just life.