Lina > Lina's Quotes

“Mankind, ignorant of the truths that lie within every human being, looked outward—pushed ever outward. What mankind hoped to learn in its outward push was who was actually in charge of all creation, and what all creation was all about.

Mankind flung its advance agents ever outward, ever outward. Eventually it flung them out into space, into the colorless, tasteless, weightless sea of outwardness without end.

It flung them like stones.

These unhappy agents found that what had already been found in abundance on Earth—a nightmare of meaninglessness without end. The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.

Outwardness lost, at last, its imagined attractions.

Only inwardness remained to be explored.

Only the human soul remain terra incognita.

This was the beginning of goodness and wisdom.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young

“There’s only one rule I know of—Goddam it, you’ve got to be kind.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young

“Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young

“The secret ingredient in my books is, there has never been a villain.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., If This Isn't Nice What Is? (Much) Expanded Second Edition: The Graduation Speeches and Other Words to Live By

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
― Albert Camus

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
― Albert Camus

“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”
― Albert Camus

“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”
― Albert Camus

“Live to the point of tears.”
― Albert Camus

“Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.”
― Albert Camus

“An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. "Can they be brought together?" This is a practical question. We must get down to it. "I despise intelligence" really means: "I cannot bear my doubts.”
― Albert Camus

“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”
― Albert Camus

“I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.”
― Albert Camus, L'Étranger

“Always go too far, because that's where you'll find the truth”
― Albert Camus

“When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune.”
― Albert Camus, The First Man

“And never have I felt so deeply
at one and the same time so detached from myself and so present in the world.”
― Albert Camus

“The need to be right - the sign of a vulgar mind.”
― Albert Camus

“I realized then that a man who had lived only one day could easily live for a hundred years in prison. He would have enough memories to keep him from being bored”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“A person's life purpose is nothing more than to rediscover, through the detours of art or love or passionate work, those one or two images in the presence of which his heart first opened.”
― Albert Camus

“Integrity has no need of rules.”
― Albert Camus

“I would like to be able to breathe— to be able to love her by memory or fidelity. But my heart aches. I love you continuously, intensely.”
― Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959

“Life is a sum of all your choices".

So, what are you doing today?”
― Albert Camus

“I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

“The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.”
― Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano

“If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there's salvation in life. Even if you can't get together with that person.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84