BBB > BBB's Quotes

“The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.”
― Sophocles

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
― William Shakespear, Hamlet

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.”
― Sophocles, Antigone

“Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, 'I am not the kind of person I want to be.' It must never sink into an assemblage of the self-satisfied.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Do not be afraid; our fate
Cannot be taken from us; it is a gift.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.”
― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“You is sharks, sartin; but if you gobern de shark in you, why den you be angel; for all angel is not'ing more dan de shark well goberned.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick: or, the White Whale

“Our doubts are traitors,
and make us lose the good we oft might win,
by fearing to attempt.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“The path to paradise begins in hell.”
― Dante Alighieri

“There is no greater sorrow
Than to recall a happy time
When miserable.”
― Dante Alighieri

“Purgatory is like our modern colleges: no one can flunk out of them. - from his intro into his translation of the divine comedy.”
― Ciardi, John,

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“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.”
― William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

“A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.”
― William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

“It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.”
― William Blake

“Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.”
― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.”
― Julius Caesar

“When the gods intend to make a man pay for his crimes, they generally allow him to enjoy moments of success and a long period of impunity, so that he may feel his reverse of fortune, when it eventually comes, all the more keenly.”
― Gaius Julius Caesar, The Conquest of Gaul

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Rumour whose joy it is to embroider the truth with falsehood and grows by her lies to gigantic proportions from tiny beginnings”
― Ovid, Metamorphoses

“It is deplorable, Agamemnon, that men's words should ever seem to speak more loudly than their deeds. Good deeds alone should make the doer eloquent, and bad deeds dress themselves in rotten arguments, not gloze their foulness with fair colours. There are men who make this practice a fine art. Their cleverness, so-called, cannot last long; they all, without exception, come to a bad end.”
― Euripides, Medea & Other Plays

“Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“The whole universe is change and life itself is but what you deem it.”
― Marcus Aurelius

“Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It's shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad'Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“The eye that looks ahead to the safe course is closed forever.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“No man can go through life
and reach the end unharmed.
Aye, trouble is now,
and trouble still to come.”
― Aeschylus, The Libation Bearers

“Religion often partakes of the myth of progress that shields us from the terrors of an uncertain future.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“if you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything”
― Ronald H. Coase

“The wise man molds himself—the fool lives only to die.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah