Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I don't want to prove anything; I merely want to live, to do no one harm but myself. I have the right to do that, haven't I?
... in marriage the great thing was love, and that with love one would always be happy, for happiness rests only on oneself.
And those who only know the non-platonic love have no need to talk of tragedy. In such love there can be no sort of tragedy.
Love knows no virtue, no merit; it loves and forgives and tolerates everything because it must. We are not guided by reason.
It is a very inconvenient habit of kittens (Alice had once made the remark) that whatever you say to them, they always purr.
After all, if it comes to that, there is really neither Ogun nor Jesus! There are only mystified forms of our consciousness.
To believe in something not yet proved and to underwrite it with our lives: It is the only way we can leave the future open.
In the West, the insane are so many that they are put in an asylum, in China the insane are so unusual that we worship them.
Society can exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly what he thinks.
I never get used to it, the unknowable mystery of a person so suddenly, totally closed, snapped shut like a half-read novel.
You refuse to listen. Because, like every other man, you can keep only one idea in your head at a time-usully the wrong one.
Personally I've never put much store by honesty- I mean how can you trust a word whose first letter you don't even pronounce
I want to create something that doesn't exist exactly in the real world, but exists in a kind of parallel to the real world.
It's very hard to know who your readers are, but that's who I'm... if I have somebody in my head, that's probably who it is.
We do know that no one gets wise enough to really understand the heart of another, though it is the task of our life to try.
There is something fundamentally wrong with the way we normally live our lives and we'd sort of like to find out what it is.
'The Dice Man' is an anti-establishment cult novel, and you don't normally make studio films from such dark comedy material.
War is a beastly business, it is true, but one proof we are human is our ability to learn, even from it, how better to exist
Artistic temperament sometimes seems a battleground, a dark angel of destruction and a bright angel of creativity wrestling.
Anger is not bitterness. Bitterness can go on eating at a man's heart and mind forever. Anger spends itself in its own time.
O Lord! You are the guide of those who are passing through the Valley of Bewilderment. If I am a heretic, enlarge my heresy.
Pain and Oblivion make mankind afraid to die; but all creatures are afraid of the one, none but mankind afraid of the other.
Governments will rise, and governments will fall, and man will do evil to man, and all we can do is turn our hearts to good.
Speaking is what most people work on. They forget the thinking and the breathing and instead try to occupy space with sound.
Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.
In virtually every organization, regardless of mission and function, people are frustrated by problems that seem unsolvable.
I've wanted to see beyond the Western, mechanical view of the world and see what else might appear when the lens was changed
Looking at scenes of nature, for even a short while, can help us become more insightful, more creative, and more productive.
I think that literature has the important effect of creating free, independent, critical citizens who cannot be manipulated.
Happiness is a hound dog in the sun. We aren't on Earth to be happy, but to experience incredible things. - Hannah Schneider
My dear Isa, I now sit down on my botom to answer all your kind and beloved letters which you was so good as to write to me.
Lundist held that a man who can observe is a man apart. Such a man can see opportunities where others see only the obstacles
It was a defeat, resorting to crude threats in a game of subtlety, but sometimes one must sacrifice a battle to win the war.
Most men have at least one redeeming feature. Finding one for Brother Rike requires a stretch. Is 'big' a redeeming feature?
Serial fiction is a conceit of comic books and soap operas. As one goes, so goes the other in terms of public consciousness.
I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant.
The orange flames waved at the crowd as paper and print dissolved inside them. Burning words were torn from their sentences.
I used to wear real fur, but, like many others, I had a change of heart when I learned what actually happens to the animals.
As with all my new pets, I gently bit each kitten on the face. This is how I let my animals know that I am now their mother.
As thou directest the power, harm or advantage will follow, and the torrent that swept the valley may be led to turn a mill.
If God had not intended that Women shou'd use their Reason, He wou'd not have given them any, 'for He does nothing in vain.'
For all the toll the desert takes of a man it gives compensations, deep breaths, deep sleep, and the communion of the stars.
Probably we never fully credit the interdependence of wild creatures, and their cognizance of the affairs of their own kind.
Nobody can deny but religion is a comfort to the distressed, a cordial to the sick, and sometimes a restraint on the wicked.
It's a good idea to pay attention to the world and try to understand how it works rather than how you would like it to work.
[My father] had spent his own short time like a priest in charge of a relic, forever expecting the blessed blood to liquefy.
My figures come and go, suggested by fortune or misfortune. I try to fix them divested of their apparent accidental quality.
Be good, be kind, be humane, and charitable; love your fellows; console the afflicted; pardon those who have done you wrong.
Even if you yourself were unhappy and anxious, whenever you glimpsed happiness in your child, you suddenly became happy too.
Will there be poppy juice in it?" Phresine shook her head. "Good. My wife and I agreed that only my wine was to be poisoned.