Big Books of 2026

Matt > Matt's Quotes

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  • #1
    Samuel Richardson
    “I know not my own heart if it be not absolutely free.”
    ― Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady
    tags: life
    46 likes

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  • #2
    Fyodor Dostoevsky
    “Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
    ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
    tags: lies, love, respect, self-deception, truth
    11794 likes

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  • #3
    Fyodor Dostoevsky
    “Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”
    ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
    9131 likes

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  • #4
    Fyodor Dostoevsky
    “What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”
    ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
    tags: hell, love, suffering
    5642 likes

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  • #5
    D.H. Lawrence
    “For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken. It is so lovely, dawn-kaleidoscopic within the crack.”
    ― D.H. Lawrence
    tags: broken-heart, d-h-lawrence, love, pomegranate
    2216 likes

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  • #6
    Daphne du Maurier
    “But luxury has never appealed to me, I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.”
    ― Daphne du Maurier
    6492 likes

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  • #7
    Daphne du Maurier
    “Women want love to be a novel. Men, a short story.”
    ― Daphne du Maurier
    tags: writing
    2555 likes

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  • #8
    Plato
    “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”
    ― Plato
    tags: attributed-no-source, compassion, kindness
    10092 likes

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  • #9
    Plato
    “Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.”
    ― Plato
    9952 likes

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  • #10
    Plato
    “Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.”
    ― Plato
    tags: discipline, education, mentoring, philosophy
    2626 likes

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  • #11
    Plato
    “According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.”
    ― Plato, The Symposium
    1509 likes

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  • #12
    Plato
    “I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.”
    ― Plato, The Republic
    tags: apology, knowing, nothing, paradox, plato, republic, socrates, socratic, wisdome
    1467 likes

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  • #13
    Plato
    “Never discourage anyone...who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.”
    ― Plato
    1229 likes

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  • #14
    Thomas Hobbes
    “Curiosity is the lust of the mind.”
    ― Thomas Hobbes
    tags: life-lessons, mistakes
    579 likes

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  • #15
    Thomas Hobbes
    “Hell is truth seen too late.”
    ― Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
    tags: hell, timing, truth
    359 likes

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  • #16
    Thomas Hobbes
    “Scientia potentia est.

    Knowledge is power.”
    ― Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
    tags: knowledge, power
    240 likes

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  • #17
    David Hume
    “Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.”
    ― David Hume, Of the Standard of Taste and Other Essays
    tags: beauty, beholder, evil, god, perception, religion, religious-meaning
    643 likes

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  • #18
    David Hume
    “Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.”
    ― David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
    tags: errors, philosophy, religion
    445 likes

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  • #19
    Jean-Jacques Rousseau
    “People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.”
    ― Jean Jacques Rousseau
    tags: wisdom
    1137 likes

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  • #20
    Jean-Jacques Rousseau
    “I prefer liberty with danger than peace with slavery.”
    ― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
    tags: freedom
    705 likes

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  • #21
    Jean-Jacques Rousseau
    “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
    ― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
    tags: government
    675 likes

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  • #22
    Baruch Spinoza
    “The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.”
    ― Baruch Spinoza
    tags: education, free-thought, philosophy
    885 likes

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  • #23
    Lyudmila Ulitskaya
    “Literature is the best thing humanity has. Poetry is the heart of literature, the highest concentration of everything that is the best in the world and in man. It is the only true food for your soul”
    ― Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Зеленый шатер
    24 likes

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  • #24
    Lyudmila Ulitskaya
    “... we live in a society of larvae--immature human beings, adolescents disguised as adults.”
    ― Ludmila Uliţkaia, The Big Green Tent
    tags: curmudgeons, evolution, maturity, society, youth
    13 likes

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  • #25
    Madame de Staël
    “Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.”
    ― Anne Louise Germaine Staël-Holstein
    tags: misattributed-george-carlin
    59 likes

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  • #26
    Madame de Staël
    “Politeness is the art of choosing among your thoughts.”
    ― Madame de Stael
    tags: courtesy, thoughts
    43 likes

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  • #27
    Leo Spitzer
    “It is only a frivolous love that cannot survive intellectual definition; great love prospers with understanding.”
    ― Leo Spitzer
    2 likes

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  • #28
    Ernst Robert Curtius
    “Ach, diese jungen Leute, sie sind wie die Vögel, im Frühling singen sie, und im Sommer sind sie dann schon wieder still.”
    ― Ernst Robert Curtius
    tags: dichten, jugend, schreiben
    4 likes

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  • #29
    Thomas Mann
    “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
    ― Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades
    tags: authors, creative-process, struggle, writers, writing
    3684 likes

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  • #30
    Thomas Mann
    “Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous - to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.”
    ― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Tales
    tags: absurd, beauty, perverse, solitude
    1764 likes



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