Aditya Chauhan > Aditya's Quotes

“Few sons are like their fathers--most are worse, few better.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“My son,' he wrote to me, 'fear the love of woman; fear that bliss, that poison....”
― Ivan Turgenev, First Love

“The reader must come armed , in a serious state of intellectual readiness. This is not easy because he comes to the text alone. In reading, one's responses are isolated, one'sintellect thrown back on its own resourses. To be confronted by the cold abstractions of printed sentences is to look upon language bare, without the assistance of either beauty or community. Thus, reading is by its nature a serious business. It is also, of course, an essentially rational activity.”
― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

“I do not mean to imply that television news deliberately aims to deprive Americans of a coherent, contextual understanding of their world. I mean to say that when news is packaged as entertainment, that is the inevitable result. And in saying that the television news show entertains but does not inform, I am saying something far more serious than that we are being deprived of authentic information. I am saying we are losing our sense of what it means to be well informed.”
― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

“I did not want to know whether I was loved, and I did not want to acknowledge to myself that I was not loved;”
― Ivan Turgenev, First Love

“Still immersed in his dream, he drank down the tepid tea. It tasted bitter. Glory, as anyone knows, is bitter stuff.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

“a samurai is a total human being, whereas a man who is completely absorbed in his technical skill has degenerated into a ‘function’, one cog in a machine.”
― Yukio Mishima

“[Nietzsche thinks artists undersexed]:
“Their vampire, their talent, grudges them as a rule that squandering of force which one calls passion. If one has a talent, one is also its victim; one lives under the vampirism of one’s talent.”
-- Friedrich Nietzsche, as quoted in Camille Paglia's "Sexual Personae”
― Camille Paglia

“...sexual freedom is when women do the things men think are sexy; the more women do these things, the more sexually free they are.”
― Andrea Dworkin, Right-Wing Women

“The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. - is sure to be noticed.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening

“Now, with God's help, I shall become myself.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard
Some do it with a bitter look
Some with a flattering word
The coward does it with a kiss
The brave man with a sword”
― Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol

“The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism and Selected Critical Prose

“Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.”
― Oscar Wilde, Selected Poems of Oscar Wilde including the Ballad of Reading Gaol

“The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde

“A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.”
― Oscar Wilde, Salomé

“Never regret thy fall,
O Icarus of the fearless flight
For the greatest tragedy of them all
Is never to feel the burning light.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The most terrible thing about it is not that it breaks one’s heart—hearts are made to be broken—but that it turns one’s heart to stone.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.”
― Oscar Wilde

“I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty. If ever I get married, I'll certainly try to forget the fact.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.”
― Oscar Wilde

“In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Popularity is the one insult I have never suffered.”
― Oscar Wilde

“How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?”
― Oscar Wilde

“The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.”
― Oscar Wilde, Miscellaneous Aphorisms; The Soul of Man

“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks.”
― Jeff Hammerbacher