Mary Karr Quotes

I think Oscar Wilde wrote a poem about a robin who loved a white rose. He loved it so much that he pierced his breast and let his heart's blood turn the white rose red. Maybe this sounds very sentimental, but for anybody who has loved a career as much as I've loved mine, there can be no short cuts.

You proclaim that one should die for the highest virtues, because you take it for granted that nobody's been living for them, not even for a single hour.

He who dies for virtue does not perish.

Vertue now is in herbs and stones and words onely.

There can be no Good Will. Will is always Evil; it is persecution to others or selfishness.

A glass of absinthe is as poetical as anything in the world. What difference is there between a glass of absinthe and a sunset?

Creating without claiming, Doing without taking credit, Guiding without interfering, This is Primal Virtue.

I love him who loveth his virtue: for virtue is the will to down-going, and an arrow of longing.

Virtue is despotic; life, reputation, every earthly good, must be surrendered at her voice. The law may seem hard, but it is the guardian of what it commands; and is the only sure defence of happiness.

He must put aside his pride, his virtue, beauty and life and bow or submit to the absolutely intolerable.

Selfish— a judgment readily passed by those who have never tested their own power of sacrifice.

Style disdains comfort and is always ready to sacrifice virtue.

I have often thought that unselfishness combined in one word more of the teachings of the Bible than any other in the language.

The man who in view of gain thinks of righteousness; who in the view of danger is prepared to give up his life; and who does not forget an old agreement however far back it extends - such a man may be reckoned a complete man.

Being selfless is not that different from being brave. It is when you are selfless that you are the bravest.

Our very business is to teach the great lesson of self-denial and humility to our people, and how unfit is it then that we should be proud ourselves!

Man is not equally moral at all hours, this is well known. If his morality is judged to be the capability for great self-sacrificing resolutions and self-denial (which, when continuous and grown habitual, are called holiness)

I realized that to become a saint one must suffer a great deal, always seek what is best, and forget oneself.

I never saw love as luck, as that gift from the gods which put everything else in place, and allowed you to succeed. No, I saw love as reward. One could find it only after one's virtue, or one's courage, or self-sacrifice, or generosity, or loss, has succeeded in stirring the power of creation.

I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art: I altered the minds of men, and the colour of things: I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me: I summed up all things in a phrase, all existence in an epigram: whatever I touched I made beautiful

There are many eyes that can detect and honor the prudent and household virtues; there are many that can discern Genius on his starry track, though the mob is incapable; but when that love which is all-suffering, all-abstaining, all-aspiring, which has vowed to itself, that it will be a wretch and also a fool in this world, sooner than soil its white hands by any compliances, comes into our streets and houses,--only the pure and aspiring can know its face, and the only compliment they can pay it, is to own it.

Resignation is a quality of the saintly souls.

Virtue is its own punishment.

The essence of true nobility is neglect of self. Let the thought of self pass in, and the beauty of a great action is gone, like the bloom from a soiled flower.