sanc > sanc's Quotes

“For someone who loved words as much as I did, it was amazing how often they failed me.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“For if the modern mind is whimsical and discursive, the classical mind is narrow, unhesitating, relentless. It is not a quality of intelligence that one encounters frequently these days. But though I can digress with the best of them, I am nothing in my soul if not obsessive.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown I back, throat to the stars, "more like deer than human being." To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“Were you in love with him?'
'Yes,' I say, simply. James and I put each other through the kind of reckless passions Gwendolyn once talked about, joy and anger and desire and despair. After all that, was it really so strange? I am no longer baffled or amazed or embarrassed by it. 'Yes, I was.' It's not the whole truth. The whole truth is, I'm in love with him still.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“But that is how a tragedy like ours or King Lear breaks your heart—by making you believe that the ending might still be happy, until the very last minute.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“How tremendous the agony of unmade decisions.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“What is more important, that Caesar is assassinated or that he is assassinated by his intimate friends? … That,’ Frederick said, 'is where the tragedy is.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“Per aspera ad astra. I’d heard a variety of translations, but the one I liked best was Through the thorns, to the stars.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“There is no comfort like complicity.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“The things about Shakespeare is, he's so eloquent...he speaks the unspeakable. He turns grief and triumph and rapture and rage into words, into something we can understand. He renders the whole mystery of humanity comprehensible.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“You were real to me. Sometimes I thought you were the only real thing.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“I don't know, it's like I look at you and suddenly the sonnets makes sense. The good ones, anyway.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“Do you blame Shakespeare for any of it?”
The question is so unlikely, so nonsensical coming from such a sensible man, that I can’t suppress a smile. “I blame him for all of it.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“Hatred is the sincerest form of flattery.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“The happiest people are not the ones who achieve the most. They are the ones who spend more time than others in a state of flow.”
― Hector Garcia & Francesc Mirallea, Ikigai for Teens: Finding Your Reason for Being

“You don’t forget the face of the person who was your last hope.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

“Destroying things is much easier than making them.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

“I can feel Peeta press his forehead into my temple and he asks, 'So now that you've got me, what are you going to do with me?' I turn into him. 'Put you somewhere you can't get hurt.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

“Kind people have a way of working their way inside me and rooting there.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

“For there to be betrayal, there would have to have been trust first.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

“Because when he sings...even the birds stop to listen.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

“They're already taking my future! They can't have the things that mattered to me in the past!”
― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

“How can two living entities possessing intelligence and judgement ever be tied together for a lifetime?”
― R.K. Narayan, Malgudi Days

“It is stimulating to live in a society that is not standardized or mechanized, and is free from monotony.”
― R.K. Narayan, Malgudi Days

“A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.”
― Jean de La Fontaine, Fables

“Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all those who live without love.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows