Mariam > Mariam's Quotes

“Some people—and I am one of them—hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin

“Dear Jesus, do something.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

“I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.”
― Ezra Pound

“What thou lovest well remains,

the rest is dross

What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee

What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage”
― Ezra Pound, The Pisan Cantos

“Glance is the enemy of vision.”
― Ezra Pound

“A real building is one on which the eye can light and stay lit.”
― Ezra Pound

“Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.”
― Ezra Pound

“Speak against unconscious oppression,
Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative,
Speak against bonds.”
― Ezra Pound

“I want to understand you,
I study your obscure language.”
― Alexander Pushkin

“I have outlasted all desire,
My dreams and I have grown apart;
My grief alone is left entire,
The gleamings of an empty heart.

The storms of ruthless dispensation
Have struck my flowery garland numb,
I live in lonely desolation
And wonder when my end will come.

Thus on a naked tree-limb, blasted
By tardy winter's whistling chill,
A single leaf which has outlasted
Its season will be trembling still.”
― Alexander Pushkin

“My whole life has been pledged to this meeting with you...”
― Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin

“A deception that elevates us is dearer than a host of low truths.”
― Aleksander Pushkin

“In a morbid condition, dreams are often distinguished by their remarkably graphic, vivid, and extremely lifelike quality. The resulting picture is sometimes monstrous, but the setting and the whole process of the presentation sometimes happen to be so probable, and with details so subtle, unexpected, yet artistically consistent with the whole fullness of the picture, that even the dreamer himself would be unable to invent them in reality, though he were as much an artist as Pushkin or Turgenev. Such dreams, morbid dreams, are always long remembered and produce a strong impression on the disturbed and already excited organism of the person.Raskolnikov had a terrible dream.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“If you but knew the flames that burn in me which I attempt to beat down with my reason.”
― Alexander Pushkin

“..depression still kept guard on him, and chased after him like a shadow - or like a faithful wife.”
― Alexander Pushkin , Eugene Onegin

“Joy is not in things; it is in us”
― Richard Wagner

“I like Wagner's music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.”
― Edgar Wilson Nye

“it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy / The Case of Wagner

“the existence of the world is justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy/The Case of Wagner

“I am a poet in deeds--not often in words.”
― Ian Fleming, Goldfinger

“Surround yourself with human beings, my dear James. They are easier to fight for than principles.”
― Ian Fleming, Casino Royale

“What transforms this world is — knowledge. Do you see what I mean? Nothing else can change anything in this world. Knowledge alone is capable of transforming the world, while at the same time leaving it exactly as it is. When you look at the world with knowledge, you realize that things are unchangeable and at the same time are constantly being transformed.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“True beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs, and finally destroys.”
― Yukio Mishima

“I was excessively afraid of being defined as a woman before I was seen as myself.”
― Nagata Kabi, My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness

“And you yourselves, ruling over your billions of neurons, what do you know about the impression of unity that is no more to be scorned than the rest of your experience? Listen, to be honest, I have the impression of living in a perpetual, universal fairyland, where things that can be explained are the exception. It seems to me that the normal is to the marvelous as the circle is to the ellipse: a specific instance, skimpy and impoverished, gutted of everything that makes conics powerful. Your ordinary trigonometry looks great next to these two focal points, the sine and cosine — both elliptical — whose relationship can only be expressed in a formula if you dare write in a little 'i', the sign of an imaginary number whose content you cannot imagine. Is the square root of -1 any more rational or thinkable than the action of a god on your soul? Both are proven by their effectiveness.”
― Georges Dumézil, The Riddle of Nostradamus: A Critical Dialogue