B > B's Quotes

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”
― Philip K. Dick, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon

“The true measure of a man is not his intelligence or how high he rises in this freak establishment. No, the true measure of a man is this: how quickly can he respond to the needs of others and how much of himself he can give.”
― Philip K. Dick

“The past is always tense, the future perfect.”
― Zadie Smith

“Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. ”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

“On my fifth trip to France I limited myself to the words and phrases that people actually use. From the dog owners I learned "Lie down," "Shut up," and "Who shit on this carpet?" The couple across the road taught me to ask questions correctly, and the grocer taught me to count. Things began to come together, and I went from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. "Is thems the thoughts of cows?" I'd ask the butcher, pointing to the calves' brains displayed in the front window. "I want me some lamb chop with handles on 'em.”
― David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day

“I dream of lost vocabularies that might express some of what we no longer can.”
― Jack Gilbert, The Great Fires

“Language is the only homeland.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.”
― Amy Tan

“Every one has experienced how learning an appropriate name for what was dim and vague cleared up and crystallized the whole matter. Some meaning seems distinct almost within reach, but is elusive; it refuses to condense into definite form; the attaching of a word somehow (just how, it is almost impossible to say) puts limits around the meaning, draws it out from the void, makes it stand out as an entity on its own account.”
― John Dewey, How We Think

“Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or savor their songs.”
― Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

“Language is the dress of thought.”
― Samuel Johnson

“A native tongue, in my opinion, isn't the language spoken where you were born or the first language you learned; it's a language that makes you feel at home. It's a language that you don't command, but that commands you. And without it, you'd feel lost, unsure of how to express to the world everything you care enough to express.”
― Adi Alsaid

“Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.”
― Seneca

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“He who is brave is free”
― Seneca

“Associate with people who are likely to improve you.”
― Seneca

“Only time can heal what reason cannot.”
― Seneca

“Life is like a play: it's not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.”
― Seneca

“Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.”
― kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“No good at life, but very funny sometimes with the commentary.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“It can often seem that those in power don't want us to enjoy making things for ourselves - they'd prefer to establish a cultural hierarchy that devalues our amateur efforts and encourages consumption rather than creation.”
― David Byrne, How Music Works

“Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Niemand ist mehr Sklave, als der sich für frei hält, ohne es zu sein.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities

“Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at.”
― Goethe

“Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will.”
― Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays

“If the word doesn't exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn't exist.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“Strangeness is a necessary ingredient in beauty.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery.”
― Charles Baudelaire