Ani > Ani's Quotes

“The evil that is in the world almost always comes from ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.”
― Albert Camus

“If I had had the power to prevent my own birth I should certainly never have consented to accept existence under such ridiculous conditions.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“In every idea emanating from genius, or even in every serious human idea -- born in the human brain -- there always remains something -- some sediment -- which cannot be expressed to others, though one wrote volumes and lectured upon it for five-and-thirty years. There is always a something, a remnant, which will never come out from your brain, but will remain there with you, and you alone, for ever and ever, and you will die, perhaps, without having imparted what may be the very essence of your idea to a single living soul.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“And now tell me, why is it that you use me words "good people" all the time? Do you call everyone that, or what?
- Everyone, - the prisoner replied. - There are no evil people in the world.

(- А теперь скажи мне, что это ты все время употребляешь слова добрые
люди"? Ты всех, что ли, так называешь?
- Всех, - ответил арестант, - злых людей нет на свете.)”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think… and I can't stop myself from thinking. At this very moment - it's frightful - if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing. I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“You're not Dostoevsky,' said the citizeness, who was getting muddled by Koroviev. Well, who knows, who knows,' he replied.
'Dostoevsky's dead,' said the citizeness, but somehow not very confidently.
'I protest!' Behemoth exclaimed hotly. 'Dostoevsky is immortal!”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“Why is it that when you awake to the world of realities you nearly always feel, sometimes very vividly, that the vanished dream has carried with it some enigma which you have failed to solve?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?”
― Toni Morrison

“The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

“But would you kindly ponder this question: What would your good do if
evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows
disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people. Here is the
shadow of my sword. But shadows also come from trees and living beings.
Do you want to strip the earth of all trees and living things just because
of your fantasy of enjoying naked light? You're stupid.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“manuscripts don't burn" - "(рукописи не горят)”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“I need you, the reader, to imagine us, for we don't really exist if you don't.”
― Nabokov Vladimi, Lolita

“Follow me, reader! Who told you that there is no true, faithful, eternal love in this world! May the liar's vile tongue be cut out! Follow me, my reader, and me alone, and I will show you such a love!”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“But what can be done, the one who loves must share the fate of the one he loves.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“I'm not in the right place - alas, I cannot rid myself of the feeling that I'm not in the right place.”
― Franz Kafka, Description of a Struggle and Other Stories

“Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth.”
― Jean Paul Sarte

“Was he an animal if music could captivate him so? It seemed to him that he was being shown the way to the unknown nourishment he had been yearning for.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

“Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“And I could never understand why you were insensitive to the sorrow and shame you inflicted on me with your words and judgements – it was as if you didn’t sense your own power.  And I certainly made you ill with words; but I knew what I was doing, though it hurt me, but I couldn’t control myself, I couldn’t hold back my words – though I regretted them.  But you landed blows with your words and you were clueless – you never pitied anybody, not then, not later – and people were defenceless before you. And”
― Franz Kafka, Letter to My Father

“Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“But I cannot find my way in this darkness," said K. "Turn left to the wall," said the priest, "then follow the wall without leaving it and you'll come to a door." The priest had already taken a step or two away from him, but K. cried out in a loud voice, "please wait a moment." "I am waiting," said the priest. "Don't you want anything more form me?" asked K. "No," said the priest. "You were so friendly to me for a time," said K., "and explained so much to me, and now you let me go as if you cared nothing about me." "But you have to leave now," said the priest. "Well, yes," said K., "you must see that I can't help it." "You must first see who I am," said the priest. "You are the prison chaplain," said K., groping his way nearer to the priest again; his immediate return to the Bank was not so necessary as he had made out, he could quite stay longer. "That means I belong to the Court," said the priest. "So why should I want anything from you? The court wants nothing from you. It receives you when you came and it dismisses you when you go.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“...Sula was wrong. Hell ain't things lasting forever. Hell is change." Not only did men leave and children grow up and die, but even the misery didn't last. One day she wouldn't even have that. This very grief that had twisted her into a curve on the floor and flayed her would be gone. She would lose that too.
Why, even in hate here I am thinking of what Sula said.”
― Toni Morrison, Sula

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”
― Soren Kierkegaard