Gabriel > Gabriel's Quotes

“I refuse to believe that Hendrix had the last possessed hand,
that Joplin had the last drunken throat,
that Morrison had the last enlightened mind.”
― Patti Smith

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night.”
― Allen Ginsberg, Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems

“The most dangerous sicknesses are those that make us believe we are well”
― Lauren Oliver, Delirium

“To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control, that can lead you to be shattered in very extreme circumstances for which you were not to blame. That says something very important about the condition of the ethical life: that it is based on a trust in the uncertain and on a willingness to be exposed; it’s based on being more like a plant than like a jewel, something rather fragile, but whose very particular beauty is inseparable from that fragility.”
― Martha Nussbaum

“The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is.”
― Susan Sontag, The Benefactor

“Con toda seguridad no habrá una política del amor. Sin embargo, las acciones políticas comunican con el Eros, pues suponen el deseo común de otra forma de vida. El amor interrumpe la perspectiva del uno y hace surgir el mundo desde el punto de vista del otro, de la diferencia. Así, el Eros constituye una fuente de energía para la protesta política. Se manifiesta como aspiración revolucionaria a una sociedad completamente diferente. Es más, mantiene en pie la fidelidad a lo venidero.”
― Byung-Chul Han, La agonía del Eros

“Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star.
It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago.
Maybe the star doesn't even exist any more. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything.”
― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself”
― Simone de Beauvoir

“La gente triste no tiene piedad.”
― Mariana Enríquez, Las cosas que perdimos en el fuego

“As we tell stories about the lives of others, we learn how to imagine what another creature might feel in response to various events. At the same time, we identify with the other creature and learn something about ourselves.”
― Martha C. Nussbaum

“Knowledge is no guarantee of good behavior, but ignorance is a virtual guarantee of bad behavior.”
― Martha C. Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities

“People say sometimes that Beauty is superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“What is an adjective? Nouns name the world. Verbs activate the names. Adjectives come from somewhere else. The word adjective (epitheton in Greek) is itself an adjective meaning 'placed on top', 'added', 'appended', 'foreign'. Adjectives seem fairly innocent additions, but look again. These small imported mechanisms are in charge of attaching everything in the world to its place in particularity. They are the latches of being.”
― Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

“Humanity does not gradually progress from combat to combat until it arrives at universal reciprocity, where the rule of law finally replaces warfare; humanity installs each of its violences in a system of rules and thus proceeds from domination to domination. The nature of these rules allows violence to be inflicted on violence and the resurgence of new forces that are sufficiently strong to dominate those in power. Rules are empty in themselves, violent and unfinalized; they are impersonal and can be bent to any purpose. The successes of history belong to those who are capable of seizing these rules, to replace those who had used them, to disguise themselves so as to pervert them, invert their meaning, and redirect them against those who had initially imposed them; controlling this complex mechanism, they will make it function so as to overcome the rulers through their own rules.”
― Michel Foucault, Nietzsche, la Genealogía, la Historia

“Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.”
― Anne Carson (Translator), Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides