Leon > Leon's Quotes

“Eros and Ananke [Love and Necessity] have become the parents of human civilization.”
― Sigmund Freud

“Altogether, I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn’t shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we’d be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, also write ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like suicide. A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe.”
― Franz Kafka

“Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.”
― Donald Woods Winnicott

“The child is alone only in the presence of someone.”
― D.W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality

“Fear of breakdown is the fear of a breakdown that has already been experienced”
― D.W. Winnicott

“Poets, philosophers and seers have always concerned themselves with the idea of a true self, and the betrayal of the self has been a typical example of the unacceptable.”
― D.W. Winnicott

“It is a joy to be hidden, but a disaster not to be found”
― D.W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality

“I busied myself to think of a story, —a story to rival those which had excited us to this task. One which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature, and awaken thrilling horror—one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart.”
― Mary Shelley

“If you don't know how to die, don't worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don't bother your head about it.”
― Michel de Montaigne

“The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as an example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky

“Life will show you masks that are worth all your carnivals”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“You reach a moment in life when, among the people you have known, the dead outnumber the living. And the mind refuses to accept more faces, more expressions: on every new face you encounter, it prints the old forms, for each one it finds the most suitable mask.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

“Do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance and Other Essays

“Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.”
― W.H. Auden, Another Time

“Calligraphy is a geometry of the soul which manifests itself physically.”
― Plato

“Writing is the geometry of the soul. ”
― Plato

“The pen is the language of the soul; as the concepts that in it are generated, such will be its writings.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“The pen is the tongue of the mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“I did not myself know what I wanted: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it.”
― Leo Tolstoy, A Confession

“There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“once you have tasted the taste of sky, you will forever look up”
― Leonardo DaVinci, Leonardo on Painting: An Anthology of Writings by Leonardo da Vinci with a Selection of Documents Relating to his Career

“He found something that he wanted, had always wanted and always would want -- not to be admired, as he had feared; not to be loved, as he had made himself believe; but to be necessary to people, to be indispensable...'very few things matter and nothing matters very much”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

“Ten times a day something happens to me like this - some strengthening throb of amazement - some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.”
― Mary Oliver

“Listen to presences inside poems,
Let them take you where they will.
Follow those private hints,
and never leave the premises.”
― Rumi

“The quality of your life is a direct reflection of the quality of the questions you are asking yourself”
― Anthony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Destiny!

“TABLA DE DERECHOS ASERTIVOS El derecho a ser tratado con respeto y dignidad El derecho a tener y expresar los propios sentimientos y opiniones El derecho a ser escuchado y tomado en serio El derecho a juzgar mis necesidades, establecer mis prioridades y tomar mis propias decisiones El derecho a decir “NO” sin sentir culpa El derecho a pedir lo que quiero, dándome cuenta de que también mi interlocutor tiene derecho a decir “NO”. El derecho a cambiar El derecho a cometer errores El derecho a pedir información y ser informado El derecho a obtener aquello por lo que pagué El derecho a decidir no ser asertivo El derecho a ser independiente El derecho a decidir qué hacer con mis propiedades, cuerpo, tiempo, etc., mientras no se violen los derechos de otras personas El derecho a tener éxito El derecho a gozar y disfrutar El derecho a mi descanso, aislamiento, siendo asertivo El derecho a superarme, aún superando a los demás”
― Olga Castanyer Mayer-Spiess, La asertividad: expresión de una sana autoestima

“Words Are Windows (or They’re Walls)
I feel so sentenced by your words,
I feel so judged and sent away,
Before I go I’ve got to know,
Is that what you mean to say?
Before I rise to my defense,
Before I speak in hurt or fear,
Before I build that wall of words,
Tell me, did I really hear?
Words are windows, or they’re walls,
They sentence us, or set us free.
When I speak and when I hear,
Let the love light shine through me.

There are things I need to say,
Things that mean so much to me,
If my words don’t make me clear,
Will you help me to be free?
If I seemed to put you down,
If you felt I didn’t care,
Try to listen through my words,
To the feelings that we share.
-–Ruth Bebermeyer”
― Marshall B. Rosenberg

“All I know is that I know nothing.”
― Socrates, Apology