Wojtek > Wojtek's Quotes

“Learn to... be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not. ”
― Henri Frederic Amiel

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.”
― Will Durant

“Nothing external to you has any power over you.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“First we feel. Then we fall.”
― James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

“Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”
― William Blake

“He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.”
― Emmanuel Kant

“Shut your eyes and see.”
― James Joyce

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.”
― Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!”
― Rudyard Kipling, If: A Father's Advice to His Son

“What is really beautiful must always be true.”
― Marie Henri Beyle

“Old age is nothing but the absence of madness, the loss of illusion and passion.”
― Stendhal, Lucien Leuwen

“Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen

“I would rather die of passion than of boredom.”
― Émile Zola, The Ladies' Paradise

“Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.”
― Bertrand Russell

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”
― Elie Wiesel

“If you have enough book space, I don't want to talk to you.”
― Terry Pratchett

“If you don't become the ocean, you'll be seasick every day.”
― Leonard Cohen

“Do not be a magician - be magic!”
― Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

“What door is opened into soul through our wounds.”
― James Hillman

“I dream in a language I do not understand when I'm awake.”
― Milorad Pavić, Dictionary of the Khazars

“The Poet is a kinsman in the clouds
Who scoffs at archers, loves a stormy day;
But on the ground, among the hooting crowds,
He cannot walk, his wings are in the way.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs Du Mal

“It is dreadful when something weighs on your mind, not to have a soul to unburden yourself to. You know what I mean. I tell my piano the things I used to tell you.”
― Frédéric Chopin

“Everything will turn out right, the world is built on that.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“Just like a murderer jumps out of nowhere in an alley, love jumped out in front of us and struck us both at once”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

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

“Why try to pursue what is completed?”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“Who told you that there is no true, faithful, eternal love in this world! May the liar’s vile tongue be cut out!”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“Ten, który kocha, powinien dzielić los tego, kogo kocha.”
― Michał Bułhakow, Mistrz i Małgorzata

“I'll go to bed, forget myself in sleep.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita