J > J's Quotes

“The weak fear happiness itself. They can harm themselves on cotton wool. Sometimes they are wounded even by happiness”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“I am convinced that human life is filled with many pure, happy, serene examples of insincerity, truly splendid of their kind-of people deceiving one another without (strangely enough) any wounds being inflicted, of people who seem unaware even that they are deceiving one another.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty - unless she is wed to something more meaningful - is always superficial.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Betrayal. Translation means doing violence upon the original, means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. So then where does that leave us? How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Of all creatures that breathe and move upon the earth, nothing is bred that is weaker than man.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Surely to be a vagrant is the worst possible fate, yet men will bear such miseries because of their wretched stomachs.”
― Homer, Homer, the Odyssey

“I sometimes think we must be all mad and that we shall wake to sanity in strait-waistcoats.”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula

“It is silliness to live when to live is torment; and then have we a prescription to die when death is our physician.”
― William Shakespeare, Othello

“Behind every work of art lies an uncommitted crime”
― Theodor Adorno

“Talent is perhaps nothing other than successfully sublimated rage.”
― Theodor W. Adorno

“Dissonance is the truth about harmony.”
― Theodor W. Adorno

“the good and the bad: the state, where the slow suicide of all—is called “life.” Just see these superfluous ones! They steal the works of the inventors and the treasures of the wise. Culture, they call their theft—and everything becometh sickness and trouble unto them! Just see these superfluous ones! Sick are they always; they vomit their bile and call it a newspaper. They devour one another, and cannot even digest themselves. Just see these superfluous ones! Wealth they acquire and become poorer thereby. Power they seek for, and above all, the lever of power, much money”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

“There’s nothing more devious than one’s own self, because no one will believe it. And, I admit I had wanted to play the fool, because a fool is easier than one’s own self; but since a fool is an extreme, after all, and an extreme sparks curiosity, then I finally settled on my very own self.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons

“We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“It's the questions we can't answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he'll look for his own answers.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“Anyone can love a thing because. That's as easy as putting a penny in your pocket.
But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“Music is a proud, temperamental mistress. Give her the time and attention she deserves, and she is yours. Slight her and there will come a day when you call and she will not answer. So I began sleeping less to give her the time she needed.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“But what was happiness but an extravagance, an impossible state to maintain, partly because it was so difficult to articulate?”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“There were times when the pressure to achieve happiness felt almost oppressive, as if happiness were something that everyone should and could attain, and that any sort of compromise in its pursuit was somehow your fault.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.”
― Saint Augustine

“There is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future.”
― St. Augustine

“I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are wise and very beautiful; but I have never read in either of them: Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden.”
― Saint Augustine

“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones