Vernon Lee Quotes

Somehow, something is always suffering. Someone is always losing out somehow. If you pick one kid up, you're not picking the other one up. You just try to minimize those small let-downs because, in a way, life is a series of let-downs from everyone, all the time. We don't mean it, but it happens. So, I just try to minimize that and spread them wide.

It breaks your heart when you throw something away, but it's what left that counts. It's like worrying about the bits of rock you have knocked off in order to make a beautiful statue. You've wasted half the rock, yeah, but it's the Venus di Milo!

Fame is a pearl many dive for and only a few bring up. Even when they do, it is not perfect, and they sigh for more, and lose better things in struggling for them.

it is true that nothing is gained without something being lost: everyone knows that in fulfilling oneself one necessarily sacrifices some possibilities.

What you had could never make up for what you'd lost.

But he did not understand the price. Mortals never do. They only see the prize, their heart's desire, their dream... But the price of getting what you want, is getting what you once wanted.

I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it.

Finding is losing something else. I think about, perhaps even mourn, what I lost to find this

People who sacrifice beauty for efficiency get what they deserve. (Bernard Mickey Wrangle, p 99)

In the new world, it is not the big fish which eats the small fish, it's the fast fish which eats the slow fish.

Genius is full of trash.

I resent the creation of a world in which beauty is a reminder of what we're losing rather than a celebration of what we have.

When life takes away, something of greater value is always given in return.

I don't like to use the word sacrifice.

All the money, all the prestige in the world will never make up for the loss of your freedom.

Let us not throw the rope after the bucket.

Unfortunately something always has to go by the wayside.

To be able to grasp something of value, sometimes you have to perform seemingly inefficient acts.

For every victory there is a price.

Things not worth doing are not worth doing well.

If, along the way, something is gained, then something will also be lost.

Ethan thought he was doing the right thing. He knew it was crazy. And he didn’t want to go, but he had to anyway. Ethan was like that. Even if he was dead. He saved the world, but he shattered mine. What now?

He saved the world, but he shattered mine.

Whatever you compromise to gain, you will lose.

All that time is lost which might be better employed.