Mehm > Mehm's Quotes

“The fault in suffering such torment is his, for his heart's boundless capacity to love was given so that he might direct it toward One possessing an infinite undying beauty. By misusing it and spending it on transitory beings, he has done wrong and suffers the punishment for his fault through the pain of separation.”
― Said Nursi, The Flashes Collection

“A fine but tarnished diamond is always preferable to a piece of glass, no
matter how polished.”
― Said Nursî, Letters: 1928-1932

“I don't see why it's impossible to express everything that's on one's mind.”
― Ivan S. Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

“Death's an old story, but new for each person.”
― Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Children: Introduction by John Bayley

“Criticizing and objecting to everything means an attempt to destruction. If you do not like something, try to make something better than it. Being destructive causes ruins, while being constructive brings about prosperity.”
― Fethullah Gulen

“But how could you live and have no story to tell?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights

“Immortality required the sacrifice of everything mortal”
― Brandon W. Teigland, Neuromachina

“We are happy when people/things conform and unhappy when they don't. People and events don't disappoint us, our models of reality do. It is my model of reality that determines my happiness or disappointments.”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

“They did nothing—other than subjecting us to complete nothingness. For, as is well known, nothing on earth puts more pressure on the human mind than nothing.”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

“Personally I take more satisfaction in understanding people than in passing judgement on them.”
― Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

“O youth! youth! you go your way heedless, uncaring – as if you owned all the treasures of the world; even grief elates you, even sorrow sits well upon your brow. You are self-confident and insolent and you say, 'I alone am alive – behold!' even while your own days fly past and vanish without trace and without number, and everything within you melts away like wax in the sun .. like snow .. and perhaps the whole secret of your enchantment lies not, indeed, in your power to do whatever you may will, but in your power to think that there is nothing you will not do: it is this that you scatter to the winds – gifts which you could never have used to any other purpose. Each of us feels most deeply convinced that he has been too prodigal of his gifts – that he has a right to cry, 'Oh, what could I not have done, if only I had not wasted my time.”
― Ivan Turgenev, First Love

“I burnt as in a fire in her presence ... but what did I care to know what the fire was in which I burned and melted--it was enough that it was sweet to burn and melt.”
― Ivan Turgenev, First Love

“Beware of the love of women; beware of that ecstasy - that slow poison.”
― Ivan Turgenev, First Love

“Ah genclik! Genclik! Pervasizca,umursamadan gidiyorsun kendi yolunda-dünyanin bütün hazineleri seninmiş gibi;keder bile seni umutlandırıyor,acı bile alnına çok güzel oturuyor.Özgüvenli ve küstahsın ve "sadece ben canlıyım,bakın!" diyorsun.Kendi günlerin hızla uçup,hiçbir iz bırakmadan yok olur ve içinmdeki her şey güneşin altında eriyip giderken bile mum gibi...kar gibi..ve belki de senin sihrinin bütün sırrı istediğin her şeyi yapabilme gücünde değil,yapmayacağın hiçbir şey olmadığını düşünme gücünde saklı.(İlk Aşk-Turgenyev)”
― Ivan Turgenev, First Love

“The tongue may hide the truth but the eyes—never!”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

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

“Yes, man is mortal, but that would be only half the trouble. The worst of it is that he's sometimes unexpectedly mortal—there's the trick!”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“I may be mistaken but it seems to me that a man may be judged by his laugh, and that if at first encounter you like the laugh of a person completely unknown to you, you may say with assurance that he is good.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead

“No man lives, can live, without having some object in view, and making efforts to attain that object. But when object there is none, and hope is entirely fled, anguish often turns a man into a monster.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead

“It's only in secondhand books that you can savor encounters like this, connections that transcend time. And that's how I learned to love the secondhand bookstore that handled these books, our Morisaki Bookshop. I realized how precious a chance I'd been given, to be part of that little place, where you can feel the quiet flow of time.”
― Satoshi Yagisawa, Days at the Morisaki Bookshop

“There was paradise in my soul, I would have made it blossom around you!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Gentle Spirit

“And though no one knew about it, she knew, and for me, that was everything, because she was everything for me, all the hope of the future that I cherished in my dreams! She was the person I had prepared for myself, and I needed no one else”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Gentle Spirit

“There are all kinds of things in the world I don't understand, but I really wanted to understand you.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“I exist.’ In thousands of agonies — I exist. I’m tormented on the rack — but I exist! Though I sit alone in a pillar — I exist! I see the sun, and if I don’t see the sun, I know it’s there. And there’s a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Indeed, people speak sometimes about the ‘animal’ cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to animals, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“When swept out of its normal channel, life scatters into innumerable streams. It is difficult to foresee which it will take in its treacherous and winding course. Where today it flows in shallows, like a rivulet over sandbanks, so shallow that the shoals are visible, tomorrow it will flow richly and fully”
― Mikhail Sholokhov, And Quiet Flows the Don

“The grass grows over the graves, time overgrows the pain. The wind blew away the traces of those who had departed; time blows away the bloody pain and the memory of those who did not live to see their dear ones again—and will not live, for brief is human life, and not for long is any of us granted to tread the grass.”
― Mikhail Sholokhov, And Quiet Flows the Don

“It does not need much wisdom to utter words of reproof; but much wisdom is needed to find such words as do not embitter a man's misfortune, but encourage him, restore to him his spirit, put spurs to the horse of his soul, refreshed by water.”
― Nikolai Gogol, Taras Bulba

“If you walk around acting like you don’t care for long enough, people will start to believe you. If you really don’t care, then people who do care will leave your life and people who don’t care will come into it. And if that happens, you will find yourself in a very terrible place.”
― Mary Gaitskill, Lost Cat

“Every person is a unique and autonomous person and actually, considered independently, the greatest artwork of all time...”
― Thomas Bernhard, The Loser