Nives > Nives's Quotes

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.”
― Mark Twain

“As we live and as we are, Simplicity - with a capital "S" - is difficult to comprehend nowadays. We are no longer truly simple. We no longer live in simple terms or places. Life is a more complex struggle now. It is now valiant to be simple: a courageous thing to even want to be simple. It is a spiritual thing to comprehend what simplicity means.”
― Frank Lloyd Wright, The Natural House

“Cheops' Law: Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

“The door handle is the handshake of the building.”
― Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses

“I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

“What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is what can you make people believe you have done.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

“Ne mogu psovati, pa ironiziram. Ne da mi se govoriti pa se smješkam. Slabost je dakle moja snaga i bezvoljnost moja volja.
I to sam ja.
Jer ja – nisam ja!”
― Janko Polić Kamov, Isušena kaljuža

“Ateista imadijaše da prizna veliko ništa od svega svojega: krvi, misli i mesa. Htio je živjeti i vjerovaše da živi. I u klicanju životu zaboravi na smrt. Ponašaše se kao zaborav bluda, kao ekstaza mase. Ne bijaše dubok; bijaše širok. Plovio je površinom, plovio po sebi i rijetko, na mahove, od slučaja zaronjivao bi u sebe i odmah izmiljio na vrh. A sada mu postane jasno, da je zaražen; da ima u njemu nešto, što se ne da prosuditi iz njegovih pjesama, iz njegova smijeha i njegovih lakih razgovora. Bacil je u njemu, razorni bacil, što se baca blatom na rimu njegovu i ideju njegovu. On već nije pristupačan društvu, ne smije pljuvati na pod, ni piti ne smije iz druge čaše.”
― Janko Polić Kamov, Isušena kaljuža

“It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Closing your eyes isn't going to change anything. Nothing's going to disappear just because you can't see what's going on. In fact, things will even be worse the next time you open your eyes. That's the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won't make time stand still.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

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

“There are occasions when a woman, no matter how weak and impotent in character she may be in comparison with a man, will yet suddenly become not only harder than any man, but even harder than anything and everything in the world.”
― Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls

“But wise is the man who disdains no character, but with searching glance explores him to the root and cause of all.”
― Nikolai V. Gogol, Dead Souls

“I saw that I’d get nowhere on the straight path, and that to go crookedly was straighter.”
― Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls

“...and sank into the profound slumber which comes only to such
fortunate folk as are troubled neither with mosquitoes nor fleas nor excessive activity of brain.”
― Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls

“Truth to tell, the modern man is bored to tears in his home; so he goes to his club. The modern woman is bored outside her boudoir; she goes to tea-parties. The modern man and woman are bored at home; they go to night-clubs.
But lesser folk who have no clubs gather together in the evening under the chandelier and hardly dare to walk through the labyrinth of their furniture which takes up the whole room and is all their fortune and their pride.”
― Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture