Ttzikun > Ttzikun's Quotes

“I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he. Throughout the whole absurd life I'd lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living. What did other people's deaths or a mother's love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we're all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also called themselves my brothers? Couldn't he see, couldn't he see that? Everybody was privileged. There were only privileged people. The others would all be condemned one day. And he would be condemned, too.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“Zrobiłem przynajmniej znudzoną minę, zawsze tak postępowałam, kiedy rozmowa w towarzystwie mnie przerastała. Wyrobiłem tym sobie opinię człowieka niezwykle inteligentnego i bywałego.”
― Szczepan Twardoch, Morfina

“Myślisz o Celtach Slowianach Awarach zasiedleniach językach izoglosach etymologiach indoeuropejskich ugrofińskich substratach nie dlatego, że zaraziła cię tym twoja matka, myślisz, ponieważ łudzisz się, że dostrzeżesz w tym jakiś sens i porządek, bo jesteś głupi i nie wiesz, że dostrzec go nie mógłbyś, nawet gdyby ten porządek tam był, ale go tam nie ma i nie dostrzeżesz go tym bardziej, chociażbyś oczy nad tymi książkami wypatrzył, mój miły, nic nie zobaczysz.
Ale pożądasz tego porządku, mój miły, jak niczego innego; bo gdyby był, to byłby również sens i twoje istnienie mogłoby mieć ten sens, mimo pęknięcia i pustki, którą niesiesz w sobie.”
― Szczepan Twardoch, Morfina

“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God's name is Abraxas.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“Love must not entreat,' she added, 'or demand. Love must have the strength to become certain within itself. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I'm beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn't pleasant, it's not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“We live as we dream--alone....”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“I don't like work--no man does--but I like what is in the work--the chance to find yourself. Your own reality--for yourself not for others--what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“Your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“I like revisiting, at certain times, spots where I was once happy; I like to shape the present in the image of the irretrievable past.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

“He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“I write not about war, but about human beings in war. I write not the history of a war, but the history of feelings. I am a historian of the soul.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II

“There can't be one heart for hatred and another for love. We only have one, and I always thought about how to save my heart.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, War's Unwomanly Face

“Women’s” war has its own colors, its own smells, its own lighting, and its own range of feelings. Its own words. There are no heroes and incredible feats, there are simply people who are busy doing inhumanly human things.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II

“I believe that in each of us there is a small piece of history. In one half a page, in another two or three. Together we write the book of time. We each call out our own truth. The nightmare of nuances.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, War's Unwomanly Face

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death. So long as you are alive, your case is doubtful; you have a right only to their skepticism.”
― Albert Camus, The Fall

“I love life - that’s my real weakness. I love it so much that I am incapable of imagining what is not life.”
― Albert Camus, The Fall

“One plays at being immortal and after a few weeks one doesn't even know whether or not one can hang on till the next day.”
― Albert Camus, The Fall

“The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Basis of Morality

“Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Basis of Morality