A feminist is someone who loathes being a woman and who dislikes the chief feminine characteristics.
Most Americans ... have a sort of permanent intoxication from within, a sort of invisible champagne.
Powerful men who have powerful passions use much of their strength in forging chains for themselves.
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
Original sin is the only doctrine that's been empirically validated by 2,000 years of human history.
If you'd take your head home and boil it for a turnip it might be useful. I can't say. But it might.
I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.
Where does a wise man kick a pebble? On the beach. Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest.
Lord! what a strange world in which a man cannot remain unique even by taking the trouble to go mad!
Faith is always at a disadvantage; it is a perpetually defeated thing which survives all conquerors.
It is well sometimes to half understand a poem in the same manner that we half understand the world.
I am more than a devil; I am a man. I can do the one thing which Satan himself cannot do— I can die.
Heartbreak has an archetypal core, all heartbroken individuals suffer from the same kind of torture.
True wisdom is to know the extent of what you don't know quite as well as you know what you do know.
Nonprofit status is what created the Bible Belt. The tax code brought religion back to this country.
Nothing under the sun is accidental, least of all that of which the intention is so clearly evident.
We moderns do not believe in demigods, but our smallest hero we expect to feel and act as a demigod.
Pain is easy to write. In pain we're all happily individual. But what can one write about happiness?
So much of life [is] a putting-off of unhappiness for another time. Nothing [is] ever lost by delay.
Rocinante was of more value for a true traveller than a jet plane. Jet planes were for business men.
The overintellectualization of surrealism can be a bromide. A dream interpreted is a deflated dream.
Rome is a place almost worn out by being looked at, a city collapsing under the weight of reference.
Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.
Tout ce qu'on invente est vrai, soi-en sure. La poesie est une chose aussi precise que la geometrie.
One day, I shall explode like an artillery shell and all my bits will be found on the writing table.
Here is true immorality: ignorance and stupidity; the devil is nothing but this. His name is Legion.
The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.
Discouragement tricks you into mentally or emotionally dwelling in the very place you want to leave.
It only seems that there is something more important for you to do than to just quietly be yourself.
No truly conscious human being sabotages himself - it's impossible, because it's contrary to Nature.
A downtrodden class... will never be able to make an effective protest until it achieves solidarity.
There is no remorse like a remorse of chess. It is a curse upon man. There is no happiness in chess.
Mankind which began in a cave and behind a windbreak will end in the disease-soaked ruins of a slum.
The great wheel of Fate rolls on like a Juggernaut, and crushes us all in turn, some soon, some late
Indeed, I have, alas! outlived almost every one of my contemporaries. One pays dear for living long.
When my babe was born, they said it was premature. It weighed only four pounds; but God let it live.
Unclose your mind. You are not a prisoner. You are a bird in flight, searching the skies for dreams.
A certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect.
If you try to use your head to think about things, people don't want to have anything to do with you
I just feel pain. A lot of pain. I thought I could imagine how much this would hurt but I was wrong.
This is the extent of his knowledge of the sea: it was very big, it was salty, and fish lived there.
I had no ambition to be a writer because the books I read were too good, my standards were too high.
An artist is like a woman who can do nothing but love, and who succumbs to every stray male jackass.
Bless us Lord, this Christmas, with quietness of mind; Teach us to be patient and always to be kind.
Stop wishing for things you complain you have not, and start making the best of all that you've got.
I propose to beg no question to shrink from no conclusion, but to follow truth wherever it may lead.
Trade has ever been the extinguisher of war, the eradicator of prejudice, the diffuser of knowledge.
Destiny is what you are supposed to do in life. Fate is what kicks you in the ass to make you do it.