Areej Fatima > Areej's Quotes

“And O there are days in this life, worth life and worth death.”
― Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend

“Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.”
― Bertrand Russell

“The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.”
― Bertrand Russell

“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid ... Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.”
― Bertrand Russell, Why Men Fight

“When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That’s if you want to teach them to think.”
― Bertrand Russell

“One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

“Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being - like a worm.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness

“There are four questions of value in life... What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living "for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is same. Only love.”
― Lord Byron

“The great object of life is sensation- to feel that we exist, even though in pain.”
― Lord Byron

“Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.”
― George Gordon Byron (Lord Byron)

“The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one’s own.”
― Willa Cather

“I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air. or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.”
― Willa Cather, My Antonia

“Only a Woman, divine, could know all that a woman can suffer.”
― Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop

“The soul cannot be humbled by fasts and prayer; it must be broken by mortal sin to experience forgiveness of sin and rise to a state of grace. Otherwise, religion is nothing but dead logic.”
― Willa Cather

“She had certain thoughts which were like companions, ideas which were like older and wiser friends.”
― Willa Cather

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
― Albert Einstein

“What cannot be said will be wept.”
― Sappho

“The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.”
― René Descartes

“If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”
― René Descartes

“But in my opinion, all things in nature occur mathematically.”
― Rene Decartes

“The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts.”
― René Descartes

“Eighteenth-century philosopher Adam Smith, an early opponent of both colonial conquest and the slave trade, observed that it is difficult for people to sustain concern for people at a distance, when fear can so easily call the mind back to the self. His example is an earthquake in China. Hearing of the disaster, a humane person in Europe will be extremely upset and concerned—for a while. But if that same person hears that he (Smith typically imagines males) will lose his little finger the following day, he will completely forget the fate of millions of people: “the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him than this paltry misfortune of his own.”
― Martha C. Nussbaum, The Monarchy of Fear: A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis

“Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.”
― Marcel Proust

“Let us leave pretty women to men with no imagination.”
― Marcel Proust, The Captive / The Fugitive

“We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.”
― Marcel Proust

“Desire makes everything blossom; possession makes everything wither and fade. ”
― Marcel Proust

“Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have of them.”
― Marcel Proust

“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before--more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations