The February Scrapbook—A Living Document

Quotes I've encountered in February that I'm loving—continually updated and curated.

Published February 3, 2025

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For the past few months, I've collected some á la carte quotes as I go—either from books I'm currently reading or that I've encountered without context. So I guess a quote has the power to affect you twice: once within the boundaries of a story, and once alone as a singular thought? In the same way that rereading can affect you—once, the first time you encounter it, and again, when you revisit the quote with new layers or memories.

February puts me in a sappy, lovey mood (hence my reading list) so I'm sure most of the quotes will have that theme. Some writers I've talked about recently, and others that just strike me. This is definitely not exhausted so there are many underlines and annotations that don't make it to this page! But a small excerpt:

Love is never wasted, for its value does not rest on reciprocity. — C.S. Lewis
I think and think and think, I‘ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it. — Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
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I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen. — John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent.
You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it's better to listen to what it has to say. — Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
It would take all my strength to quiet my heart. — Paulo Coehlo, The Alchemist
Never too late to learn some embarrassingly basic, stupidly obvious things about oneself. — Alain de Botton
One of the most satisfying experiences I know is just fully to appreciate an individual in the same way I appreciate a sunset. When I look at a sunset, I don't find myself saying 'soften the orange a little on the right hand corner and a bit more purple in the cloud color.' I don't try to control a sunset. I watch it with awe as it unfolds. it is this receptive, open attitude which is necessary to truly perceive something as it is. —Carl Rogers
Human beings make life so interesting. Do you know, that in a universe so full of wonders, they have managed to invent boredom? — Terry Pratchett.
Understand, I’ll slip quietly away from the noisy crowd when I see the pale stars rising, blooming, over the oaks. I’ll pursue solitary pathways through the pale twilit meadows, with only this one dream: You come too. — Rilke.
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. — Rachel Carson, Silent Spring.
But you can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can't last. — Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451.
People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character. — Ralph Waldo Emerson.
In people's lives I want to be that which does not hurt. — Marina Tsvetayeva.
And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good. — John Steinbeck, East of Eden.
One day, I will find the right words and they will be simple. — Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums.
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. — Anaïs Nin.
I didn't fall in love. I rose in it. — Toni Morrison.
I did think, let's go about this slowly. This is important. This should take some really deep thought. We should take small thoughtful steps. But, bless us, we didn't. — Mary Oliver, Felicity.
When I first met you I felt a kind of contradiction in you. You're seeking something, but at the same time running away for all you're worth. — Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore.
Strange as it may seem, I still hope for the best, even though the best, like an interesting piece of mail, so rarely arrives, and even when it does it can be lost so easily. — Lemony Snicket.
The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them. — Paulo Coehlo, The Alchemist.
The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them. — Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island.
The best way to know life is to love many things. — Vincent Van Gogh
Why does even the best person hold back something from another? Why not say directly what we feel if we know that what we entrust won’t be scattered to the winds? As it is, everyone looks much tougher than he really is, as if he felt it’d be an insult to his feeling if he expressed them too readily. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights.
Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be! — Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote.
You've got to find some way of saying it without saying it. — Duke Ellington.
The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see. — James Baldwin.
It is such a happiness when good people get together and they always do. — Jane Austen
I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past. — Virginia Woolf.
The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means. — Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven.
Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time. — Maya Angelou.
Correction does much, but encouragement does more. — Goethe.
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. — Emerson.
Did you know I always thought you were braver than me? Did you ever guess that that was why I was so afraid? It wasn't that I only loved some of you. But I wondered if you could ever love more than some of me. — Jodi Lynn Anderson, Tiger Lily.
It was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials. — John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath.
We would be together and have our books, and at night be warm in bed together, with the windows open and the stars bright. — Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast.
Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy. — Thomas Merton.
One can waste years this way, systematically postponing precisely the things one cares about the most. — Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks.
You walked, by chance, into a life I wasn't proud of, and from that day, something started to change. I breathed better, I hated less, I freely admired what was meant to be. Before you, without you, I adored nothing. That force you never mocked was never a lonely force, a force of rejection. With you, I accepted more things. I have learned to live. That's probably why I've always mixed my love with so much gratitude. — Albert Camus.
For the simplicity on this side of complexity, I wouldn't give you a fig. But for the simplicity on the other side of complexity, for that I would give you anything I have. — Oliver Wendell Berry.
I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees. — Thoreau.
All too often children are accompanied by adults. — Fran Lebowitz, The Fran Lebowitz Reader.
The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere. That is why so much of social life is exhausting; one is wearing a mask. I have shed my mask. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh.
The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark. — John Muir.
There would be nothing trivial about our lives. Everyday-things with us would mean the greatest things. — George Eliot, Middlemarch.
This is the feeling that one can express one's thoughts to the other just as they are, since there is not the slightest compulsion to assume a pretended character. — Alan Watts. Nature, Man, and Woman.
I like to think that nothing's final, and that everyone gets to be together even when it looks like they don't, that it all works out even when all the evidence seems to say something else, that you and I are always young in the woods, and that I'll see you sometime again, even if it's not with any kind of eyes I know of or understand. I wouldn't be surprised if that is the way things go after all—that all things end happy. — Jodi Lynn Anderson, Tiger Lily.
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