Rob Lewis > Rob's Quotes

“I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“There are no facts, only interpretations.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“May you live all the days of your life.”
― Jonathan Swift

“But I’m not guilty,” said K. “there’s been a mistake. How is it even possible for someone to be guilty? We’re all human beings here, one like the other.” “That is true” said the priest “but that is how the guilty speak”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“Before he dies, all his experiences in these long years gather themselves in his head to one point, a ques-tion he has not yet asked the doorkeeper. He waves him nearer, since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend low towards him, for the difference in height between them has altered much to the man's disadvantage. "What do you want to know now?" asks the doorkeeper; "you are insati-able." "Everyone strives to reach the Law," says the man, "so how does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever begged for admit-tance?" The doorkeeper recognizes that the man has reached his end, and to let his failing senses catch the words roars in his ear: "No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“I see, these books are probably law books, and it is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that you should be condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“You must not pay too much attention to opinions. The written word is unalterable, and opinions are often only an expression of despair.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“Next time I come here," he said to himself, "I must either bring sweets with me to make them like me or a stick to hit them with.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
― Leo Tolstoy , Anna Karenina

“If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“All the girls in the world were divided into two classes: one class included all the girls in the world except her, and they had all the usual human feelings and were very ordinary girls; while the other class -herself alone- had no weaknesses and was superior to all humanity.”
― Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“It's hard to love a woman and do anything.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“He soon felt that the fulfillment of his desires gave him only one grain of the mountain of happiness he had expected. This fulfillment showed him the eternal error men make in imagining that their happiness depends on the realization of their desires.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Everything intelligent is so boring.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.”
― Joan Didion, On Self-Respect

“Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.