Yashar > Yashar's Quotes

“The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it, would save him.”
― Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men

“There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books.”
― Irving Stone, Clarence Darrow for the Defense

“Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.”
― Iris Murdoch, Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature

“Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”
― William Goldman, Four Screenplays with Essays: Marathon Man - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - The Princess Bride - Misery

“Love is an abstract noun, something nebulous. And yet love turns out to be the only part of us that is solid, as the world turns upside down and the screen goes black.”
― Martin Amis, The Second Plane: September 11, 2001-2007

“If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.”
― Francois Mauriac

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Essays, Letters and Miscellanies

“I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.”
― Georges Bataille, Violent Silence: Celebrating Georges Bataille

“Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means...”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“We live for books.”
― Umberto Eco

“The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.”
― Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality

“Absence is to love as wind is to fire: it extinguishes the little flame, it fans the big.”
― Umberto Eco

“To survive, you must tell stories.”
― Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before

“All poets write bad poetry. Bad poets publish them, good poets burn them.”
― Umberto Eco

“اگر زندگانی سپری نمی شد چقدر تلخ و ترسناک بود.”
― صادق هدایت

“The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.”
― Nikolai V. Gogol

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more.”
― Hans Christian Andersen, The Little Mermaid

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
― Mark Twain

“If you want to understand a society, take a good look at the drugs it uses. And what can this tell you about American culture? Well, look at the drugs we use. Except for pharmaceutical poison, there are essentially only two drugs that Western civilization tolerates: Caffeine from Monday to Friday to energize you enough to make you a productive member of society, and alcohol from Friday to Monday to keep you too stupid to figure out the prison that you are living in.”
― Bill Hicks

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“Paths are made by walking”
― Franz Kafka

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“پس اين فرشتگان به چه كارى مشغولند
كه مثل پرندگان راست راست مى چرخند در هوا
سر ماه
حقوق شان را مى گيرند

پس اين فرشتگان به چه كارى مشغولند
كه مرگ تو را نديدند
كاش پر و بال شان در آتش آفتاب تير بسوزد
ما با ذغال شان
شعار خيابانى بنويسيم

پس اين فرشتگان پيرشده
جز جاسوسى ما
به چه كارِ بدِ ديگرى مشغولند
كه فرياد ما به گوش كسى نمى رسد”
― شمس لنگرودی

“Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.”
― Voltaire

“نمی خواهد
چیزی را دوست بداری
همین بهانه های کوچک برای زنده ماندنت
بعدها
تو را خواهد کشت.”
― علیرضا آدینه

“Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read.”
― Raymond Carver