Ashish Joshi > Ashish's Quotes

“It had become usual to give Napoleon the Credit for every Successful achievement and every stroke of good fortune. You would often hear one hen remark to another, “Under the guidance of our leader, Comrade Napoleon, I have laid five eggs in six days” or two cows, enjoying a drink at the pool, would exclaim,
“thanks to the leadership of Comrade Napoleon, how excellent this water tastes!”...”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“And I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice. I don't want any greatness for it, particularly a greatness born of blood and falsehood. I want to keep it alive by keeping justice alive.”
― Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion and Death: Essays

“I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible.”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

“What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism

“You want to do it?"

"I might. If you offer me enough."

"Howard—anything you ask. Anything. I'd sell my soul..."

"That's the sort of thing I want you to understand. To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul—would you understand why that's much harder?”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
― Charles Bukowski

“I have always thirsted for knowledge, I have always been full of questions.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“I shall no longer be instructed by the Yoga Veda or the Aharva Veda, or the ascetics, or any other doctrine whatsoever. I shall learn from myself, be a pupil of myself; I shall get to know myself, the mystery of Siddhartha." He looked around as if he were seeing the world for the first time.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“And here is a doctrine at which you will laugh. It seems to me, Govinda, that love is the most important thing in the world.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“Siddhartha stopped fighting his fate this very hour, and he stopped suffering.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“You love nobody. Is that not true?"
"Maybe," said Siddhartha wearily. "I am like you. You cannot love either, otherwise how could you practice love as an art? Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can - that is their secret.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“What is meditation?... It is fleeing from the self, it is a short escape of the agony of being a self, it is a short numbing of the senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life. The same escape, the same short numbing is what the driver of an ox-cart finds in the inn, drinking a few bowls of rice wine or fermented coconut-milk.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“I, also, would like to look and smile, sit and walk like that, so free, so worthy, so restrained, so candid, so childlike and mysterious. A man only looks and walks like that when he has conquered his Self. I also will conquer my Self.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“I want to learn from myself, want to be my student, want to get to know myself, the secret of Siddhartha.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“Never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“I have no desire to walk on water," said Siddhartha. "Let the old shramanas satisfy themselves with such skills.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“It [enlightenment] has not come to you by means of teaching! And-thus is my thought, oh exalted one,-nobody will obtain salvation by means of teachings! (character of Siddhartha, speaking to the Buddha)”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“But out of all secrets of the river, he today only saw one, this one touched his soul. He saw: this water ran and ran, incessantly it ran, and was nevertheless always there, was always at all times the same and yet new in every moment! Great be he who would grasp this, understand this! He understood and grasped it not, only felt some idea of it stirring, a distant memory, divine voices.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Depression is like a woman in black. If she turns up, don’t shoo her away. Invite her in, offer her a seat, treat her like a guest and listen to what she wants to say.”
― Carl Jung

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”
― George Orwell

“It is perhaps the misfortune of my life that I am interested in far too much but not decisively in any one thing; all my interests are not subordinated in one but stand on an equal footing.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“Only in their dreams can men be truly free. 'Twas always thus, and always thus will be.”
― Tom Schulman, Dead Poets Society

“It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive
But to be young was very heaven.”
― William Wordsworth, The Prelude

“Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead

“that we must suffer, suffer into truth.
We cannot sleep, and drop by drop at the heart
the pain of pain remembered comes again
and we resist, but ripeness comes as well.
From the gods enthroned on the awesome rowing-bench
there comes a violent love.”
― Aeschylus, Agamemnon