Oscar Ward > Oscar's Quotes

“Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.”
― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
― George Orwell

“Life is a combination of magic and pasta.”
― Federico Fellini

“I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“The fact that a man who goes his own way ends in ruin means nothing ... He must obey his own law, as if it were a daemon whispering to him of new and wonderful paths ... There are not a few who are called awake by the summons of the voice, whereupon they are at once set apart from the others, feeling themselves confronted with a problem about which the others know nothing. In most cases it is impossible to explain to the others what has happened, for any understanding is walled off by impenetrable prejudices. "You are no different from anybody else," they will chorus or, "there's no such thing," and even if there is such a thing, it is immediately branded as "morbid"...He is at once set apart and isolated, as he has resolved to obey the law that commands him from within. "His own law!" everybody will cry. But he knows better: it is the law...The only meaningful life is a life that strives for the individual realization — absolute and unconditional— of its own particular law ... To the extent that a man is untrue to the law of his being ... he has failed to realize his own life's meaning.”
― Carl Jung

“Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.”
― Erich Fromm

“Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet "for sale", who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence - briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing - cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity. He cannot help suffering, even though he can experience moments of joy and clarity that are absent in the life of his "normal" contemporaries. Not rarely will he suffer from neurosis that results from the situation of a sane man living in an insane society, rather than that of the more conventional neurosis of a sick man trying to adapt himself to a sick society. In the process of going further in his analysis, i.e. of growing to greater independence and productivity,his neurotic symptoms will cure themselves.”
― Erich fromm, The Art of Being

“The best way out is always through.”
― Robert Frost

“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.”
― Robert Frost

“Something we were withholding made us weak, until we found it was ourselves.”
― Robert Frost

“Love says 'I am everything.' Wisdom says 'I am nothing.' Between the two, my life flows.”
― Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That

“Time is a created thing. To say 'I don't have time,' is like saying, 'I don't want to.”
― Lao Tzu

“Accomplish but do not boast, accomplish without show, accomplish without arrogance, accomplish without grabbing, accomplish without forcing.”
― Lao Tzu

“The Way to do is to be.”
― Lao Tzu

“Your own positive future begins in this moment. All you have is right now. Every goal is possible from here.”
― Lao Tzu

“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
― Lewis Carroll

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
― Gospel of Thomas

“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Garden of Eden

“To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.
A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell through all its regions.”
― William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

“How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so? ”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum

“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”
― Rumi

“What you think, you become.
What you feel, you attract.
What you imagine, you create.”
― Buddha

“silence is the language of god,
all else is poor translation.”
― Rumi

“If you are falling....dive.”
― Joseph Campbell

“If you can quit, then quit. If you can't quit, you're a writer.”
― R.A. Salvatore