Alex > Alex's Quotes

“I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“People, in general," he said, "only ask advice not to follow it; or if they do follow it, it is for the sake of having someone to blame for having given it.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers

“If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

“Pardon My Sanity In A World Insane”
― Emily Dickinson

“open me carefully”
― Emily Dickinson, Selected Letters

“Who loves you most, and loves you best, and thinks of you when others rest? 'Tis Emilie.”
― Emily Dickinson, Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson

“The literal meaning of life is whatever you're doing that prevents you from killing yourself.”
― Albert Camus

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
― Albert Camus

“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

“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”
― Albert Camus

“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”
― Albert Camus

“Live to the point of tears.”
― Albert Camus

“But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.”
― Albert Camus

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
― Albert Camus

“Everything people did seemed so silly, because they only died in the end.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“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

“There are no facts, only interpretations.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Yes! All it would take is just once in my life to be careful and patient and – and that’s all there is to it! All it would take is to stand firm just once, and I can change my whole destiny in a single hour! The main thing is standing firm. Just remember what happened to me in similar circumstances seven months ago in Roulettenburg, before my final loss. Oh, that was a remarkable instance of resolve: I had lost everything, everything … I’m leaving the casino, and I see that I still have a single gulden knocking about in my waistcoat pocket. ‘Ah, so I’ll be able to buy myself some dinner!’ I thought, but after taking about a hundred steps, I changed my mind and went back. I staked that gulden on manque (this time it was manque), and there really is something peculiar in the feeling, when you’re alone, in a foreign country, far from your native land and friends, and you don’t know if you’re going to eat that day, you stake your last gulden, the very, very last one! I won and twenty minutes later I walked out of the casino with 170 gulden in my pocket. That is a fact, sir! That’s what your last gulden can mean sometimes! And what if I had lost heart, if I hadn’t dared to bring myself to do it? … Tomorrow, tomorrow it will all be over! 1866”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Gambler and Other Stories

“If you like – I don’t know. I only know that I need to win, that it is also my only way out. And that’s perhaps why I think that I will win without fail.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Gambler and Other Stories

“A true gentleman, even if he loses his entire fortune, must not show emotion. Money is supposed to be so far beneath a gentleman that it’s almost not worth thinking about.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Gambler and Other Stories

“... and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it.”
― E. Annie Proulx, Brokeback Mountain