TheBookWorm > TheBookWorm's Quotes

“Man’s unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.”
― Thomas Carlyle

“The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Dreams, memories, the sacred--they are all alike in that they are beyond our grasp. Once we are even marginally separated from what we can touch, the object is sanctified; it acquires the beauty of the unattainable, the quality of the miraculous. Everything, really, has this quality of sacredness, but we can desecrate it at a touch. How strange man is! His touch defiles and yet he contains the source of miracles.”
― Yukio Mishima, Spring Snow

“What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.”
― Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”
― Andre Gide, Autumn Leaves

“Go outside. Don’t tell anyone and don’t bring your phone. Start walking and keep walking until you no longer know the road like the palm of your hand, because we walk the same roads day in and day out, to the bus and back home and we cease to see. We walk in our sleep and teach our muscles to work without thinking and I dare you to walk where you have not yet walked and I dare you to notice. Don’t try to get anything out of it, because you won’t. Don’t try to make use of it, because you can’t. And that’s the point. Just walk, see, sit down if you like. And be. Just be, whatever you are with whatever you have, and realise that that is enough to be happy.
There’s a whole world out there, right outside your window. You’d be a fool to miss it.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“A man lives by believing something; not by debating and arguing about many things.”
― Thomas Carlyle

“Education is no substitute for intelligence.”
― Frank Herbert

“No pressure, no diamonds.”
― Thomas Carlyle

“A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.”
― Elbert Hubbard

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

“Tell a man he is brave, and you help him to become so.”
― Thomas Carlyle

“Never was anything great achieved without danger.”
― Niccolo Machiavelli

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou

“A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.”
― Thomas Carlyle

“Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world. ”
― Thomas Carlyle

“Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.”
― Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune

“I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.”
― Thomas Carlyle

“When silence is prolonged over a certain period of time, it takes on new meaning.”
― Yukio Mishima, Thirst for Love

“I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.”
― Thomas Carlyle

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you'll be able to see further.”
― Thomas Carlyle

“No matter how exotic human civilization becomes, no matter the developments of life and society nor the complexity of the machine/human interface, there always come interludes of lonely power when the course of humankind, the very future of humankind, depends upon the relatively simple actions of single individuals.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one less scoundrel in the world.”
― Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History

“A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“Every man is my superior in that I may learn from him.”
― Thomas Carlyle

“The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment