Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If my mind could gain a firm footing, I would not make essays, I would make decisions; but it is always in apprenticeship and on trial.
To say less of yourself than is true is stupidity, not modesty. To pay yourself less than you are worth is cowardice and pusillanimity.
Authors communicate with the people by some special extrinsic mark; I am the first to do so by my entire being, as Michel de Montaigne.
Princes give mee sufficiently, if they take nothing from me, and doe me much good, if they doe me no hurt: it is all I require of them.
In all of my work, I think I'm exploring the idea that we are aliens to each other, how there is a huge distance that separates us all.
Pathos and poignancy are, to me, tactics and techniques; in my work as a writer, I fetch them from my toolbox and use them as required.
I think that when you follow Christ, one of the things that happens when you start listening to His voice is that you really are alone.
Who ever told you there is no such thing in the world as real, true, everlasting love? May the liar have his despicable tongue cut out!
Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being.
Broch is an inspiration to us, not only because of what he accomplished, but also because of all that he aimed at and could not attain.
I think spiritualism, mesmerism, the mental healing movement, provided some people with the most meaningful experiences of their lives.
You can live in the same city your entire life and still be completely a foreigner when you step out, in your old age, onto the street.
'Which is stronger, politics or love?' is like asking, 'Which is stronger, exhaling or inhaling?' They are two sides of the same thing.
Immortality gets very, very boring. You'd be surprised at how interesting the small mundanities of life can seem after a few millennia.
If a German or an Austrian, a Greek or a Bashibazouk, had composed Gerontius, the whole world would have by now admitted its qualities.
Alcohol is the river we sit on the banks of, contemplating. Sometimes we watch ourselves float past, sometimes we watch ourselves sink.
Thought consoles us for all, and heals all. If at times it does you ill, ask it for the remedy for that ill and it will give it to you.
If I can't do what I want to do, then my job is to not do what I want to do. It's not the same thing, but it's the best thing I can do.
A white face goes with a white mind. Occasionally a black face goes with a white mind. Very seldom a white face will have a black mind.
I think one of the nicest things that we created as a generation was just the fact that we could say, 'Hey, I don't like white people.'
I'm a fifty-three-year-old writer who can remember being a ten-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an eighty-year-old writer.
The most terrible thing about it is not that it breaks one’s heart—hearts are made to be broken—but that it turns one’s heart to stone.
What art seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.
Well, I know, of course, how important it is not to keep a business engagement, if one wants to retain any sense of the beauty of life.
Women, as some witty Frenchman once put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out.
I like Wagner's music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.
It is no use telling me there are bad aunts and good aunts. At the core, they are all alike. Sooner or later, out pops the cloven hoof.
Even though he was afraid to admit it, when he was with her it seemed it was worth doing all those normal things that normal people do.
In fact, they didn't talk much at all, but they spent time together, each in his own abyss, held safe and tight by the other's silence.
The vanity of men, a constant insult to women, is also the ground for the implicit feminine claim of superior sensitivity and morality.
It's as simple as this. When people don't unload their opinions and feel like they've been listened to, they won't really get on board.
Quite often in comic book movies, very good actresses are relegated to being the girlfriend or the helper or the sidekick or something.
We're all painfully aware of how suddenly violence can occur, how crippling it is, and how survivors have to find a way back from that.
I remember very vividly going to school, being very happy, and then just having guys there who were just out to make my life miserable.
We learn as much from sorrow as from joy, as much from illness as from health, from handicap as from advantage and indeed perhaps more.
Euthanasia is a long, smooth-sounding word, and it conceals its danger as long, smooth words do, but the danger is there, nevertheless.
From that house there has come so much life that it ought never to die or fall into ruin... For me that house was a gateway to America.
Hot air balloons are terrific to shoot from, although they have become very expensive, as has most lodging and food in the Napa Valley.
With the plundered people transferring their energies into relaxed and receptive thoughts, degradation and lust for power produced art.
If I were God - and I never understand why I'm not - I should say, "Shop around, I don't think you'll find a better bargain than here."
So many people in their 20s and 30s, on Twitter, say 'Please write something for us,' so I have to listen to them, they're my audience.
I just went to work for a vampire, was scared by a spider, and got knocked down by a tanning bomb. And that’s just my day, not my week.
I don't want to ever write a book that seems like it's pandering to younger people or talking down to people who I know are very smart.
You're...writing for other writers to an extent-the dead writers whose work you admire, as well as the living writers you like to read.
When you're a brown Muslim from Iran talking about Jesus on TV, you need to keep your cool at all times, OK? That's not rocket science.
They are very good reasons why voice acting in games can be so terrible. Writers are in a great position to be able to bridge this gap.
It is important to remember that we are energy. Einstein told us that. And energy cannot be created or destroyed, it just changes form.
For new ideas to be translated into new realities requires not only clarity of vision but also the opportunity to change old realities.
Our disasters have been some of the best things that ever happened to us. And what we swore were blessings have been some of the worst.
The impression left after watching the motions of birds is that of extreme mobility - a life of perpetual impulse checked only by fear.