ანა თოიძე > ანა's Quotes

“The absence of the will to live is, alas, not sufficient to make one want to die.”
― Michel Houellebecq

“Those who love life do not read. Nor do they go to the movies, actually. No matter what might be said, access to the artistic universe is more or less entirely the preserve of those who are a little fed up with the world.”
― Michel Houellebecq, H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life

“People often say that the English are very cold fish, very reserved, that they have a way of looking at things – even tragedy – with a sense of irony. There’s some truth in it; it’s pretty stupid of them, though. Humor won’t save you; it doesn’t really do anything at all. You can look at life ironically for years, maybe decades; there are people who seem to go through most of their lives seeing the funny side, but in the end, life always breaks your heart. Doesn’t matter how brave you are, how reserved, or how much you’ve developed a sense of humor, you still end up with your heart broken. That’s when you stop laughing. In the end there’s just the cold, the silence and the loneliness. In the end, there’s only death.”
― Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles

“The world outside had its own rules, and those rules were not human.”
― Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles

“I don't like this world. I definitely do not like it. The society in which I live disgusts me; advertising sickens me; computers make me puke.”
― Michel Houellebecq, Whatever

“It's a curious idea to reproduce when you don't even like life.”
― Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles

“An entire life spent reading would have fulfilled my every desire; I already knew that at the age of seven. The texture of the world is painful, inadequate; unalterable, or so it seems to me. Really, I believe that an entire life spent reading would have suited me best. Such a life has not been granted me...”
― Michel Houellebecq, Whatever

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“You're on Earth. There's no cure for that.”
― Samuel Beckett

“The only sin is the sin of being born”
― Samuel Beckett

“When reason fails, the devil helps!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“And the more I drink the more I feel it. That's why I drink too. I try to find sympathy and feeling in drink.... I drink so that I may suffer twice as much!”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Do you understand, sir, do you understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn?" Marmeladov’s question came suddenly into his mind "for every man must have somewhere to turn...”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid—and I know they are—yet I won't be wiser?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Man has it all in his hands, and it all slips through his fingers from sheer cowardice.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“That's just the point: an honest and sensitive man opens his heart, and the man of business goes on eating - and then he eats you up.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Where was it that I read about a man condemned to death saying or thinking, an hour before his death, that if he had to live somewhere high up on a cliffside, on a ledge so narrow that there was room only for his two feet - and with the abyss, the ocean, eternal darkness, eternal solitude, eternal storm all around him - and had to stay like that, on a square foot of space, an entire lifetime, a thousand years, an eternity - it would be better to live so than die right now! Only to live, to live, to live! To live, no matter how - only to live! ...How true! Lord, how true! Man is a scoundrel! And he's a scoundrel who calls him a scoundrel for that.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Intelligence alone is not nearly enough when it comes to acting wisely.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Reason is the slave of passion.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“საინტერესოა, როდესაც სხვები შენზე ლაპარაკობენ, მით უმეტეს, თუ ისინი შენს იქ ყოფნას ვერც ამჩნევენ. ის კი არა და, შეიძლება საკუთარ არსებობაში დაეჭვდე. ამას კი თავისი ხიბლი აქვს.”
― Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles

“Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader's recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book's truth.”
― Marcel Proust, Time Regained

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

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

“Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.”
― Andre Gide

“Everything's already been said, but since nobody was listening, we have to start again.”
― Andre Gide