Hendrik Strauss > Hendrik's Quotes

“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life.”
― Ernest Renan

“Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.”
― Sir Francis Bacon

“But you will never know another's heart, unless
You are prepared to give yours too.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Urfaust

“Civilization is a race between disaster and education.”
― H.G. Wells

“The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. ”
― James Baldwin

“Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader's recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book's truth.”
― Marcel Proust, Time Regained

“A person with a melancholy temperament had been fated with both an awful burden and what Byron called “a fearful gift.” The burden was a sadness and despair that could tip into a state of disease. But the gift was a capacity for depth, wisdom—even genius.”
― Joshua Wolf Shenk, Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness

“I wish to go beyond the fire that burns me.”
― Petrarch

“When I first opened this book and saw all those scholarly footnotes, my heart leapt up as though I saw a host of golden daffodils.”
― Steven Moore, The Novel: An Alternative History, 1600-1800

“If anyone comes to the gates of poetry and expects to become an adequate poet by acquiring expert knowledge of the subject without the Muses' madness, he will fail, and his self-controlled verses will be eclipsed by the poetry of men who have been driven out of their minds.”
― Plato, Phaedrus

“Democratic and aristocratic states are not in their own nature free. Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments; and even in these it is not always found. It is there only when there is no abuse of power. But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.”
― Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws

“To which end we are to consider, that the Felicity of this life, consisteth not in the repose of a mind satisfied.”
― Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

“The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi, The Illuminated Rumi

“There are certain memories that remain inviolate to the ravages of time. And to those of suffering. It is not true that everything is colored by time and suffering. It is not true that they bring everything to ruin.”
― Han Kang, 흰

“Moreover, one should so respect a friend's presence that he dare not perform anything shameful or speak any unbecoming word, since any fault so reflects on a friend that the friend not only blushes and grieves inwardly but also reproaches himself with what he sees or hears, as if he had committed the sin himself.”
― Aelred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship

“A library is not a sign of accomplishment. It is a sign of desire.”
― Jeffrey J. Kripal