Leo > Leo's Quotes

“If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”
― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Canterville Ghost

“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, but only saps today of its strength.”
― A.J. Cronin

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind. Nor hath love's mind of any judgment taste; Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste: And therefore is love said to be a child, Because in choice he is so oft beguil'd.”
― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“people can die of mere imagination”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

“Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time!

But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can't handle money!”
― George Carlin

“Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
― Voltaire

“All thinking men are atheists.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

“Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.”
― Voltaire

“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”
― Voltaire

“‎Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.”
― Voltaire

“The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.”
― Voltaire

“I don’t know where I am going, but I am on my way.”
― Voltaire

“Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.”
― Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever

“Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”
― Isaac Asimov

“Life would be tragic if it weren't funny.”
― Stephen Hawking

“Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?”
― Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

“The Stoics taught a life of restraint and control, the personal cultivation of learning, beauty, and reason. The Stoics asked the Romans to realize that much that is encountered in life is beyond the individual's control. Make the best of what can be humanly cultivated. It is a kind of Platonism shrunk to a pursuit of private feelings and thoughts: Do the best with what you can control and refine, and let the rest go.
"The world is rational, but it is only amenable to active intervention within the limits of the individual's capacity. Do not try to be an overachiever. Do not dream of social transformation. Private cultivation rather than social action makes for the good life. Although the slave Epictetus was one of the principal Stoic writers, the emperor Marcus Aurelius's upper-class background is more typical of its devotees.
"Stoicism is a narrow ethic, one suitable to the emotional and intellectual needs of aristocrat and slave alike, but less useful for the ambitious middle class.”
― Norman F. Cantor, Antiquity: The Civilization of the Ancient World

“To burn always with this hard gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.”
― Walter Pater, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry

“Books are a refuge, a sort of cloistral refuge, from the vulgarities of the actual world. ”
― Walter Pater

“Physicists are made of atoms. A physicist is an attempt by an atom to understand itself.”
― Michio Kaku, Parallel Worlds: A Journey through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos

“It is often stated that of all the theories proposed in this century, the silliest is quantum theory. In fact, some say that the only thing that quantum theory has going for it is that it is unquestionably correct.”
― Michio Kaku, Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension

“He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche

“It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.”
― Richard Dawkins

“I like long walks, especialy when they are taken by people who annoy me.”
― Noel Coward

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion