Leçem > Leçem's Quotes

“You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”
― Dr. Seuss

“The emperor beckons me; he wants me to marry his daughter.
The road to the capital is long and distant; I don't want her.”
― Yu Hua, To Live

“Maybe they understood, in fact, that beauty and meaning had nothing to do with one another.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

“Mind over matter, people say. But what is matter, anyway? When you look at it under a microscope, it's just tiny bits of stuff. Atomic particles. Sub-atomic particles. Look deeper and deeper and eventually you'll find nothing. We're mostly empty space. We're mostly nothing. Tra-la-la. And we're all the same nothingness. You and me, just filling the space with nothingness. We could walk through walls if we put our minds to it, people say. What they don't mention is that walking through a wall would most likely kill you. Don't forget that.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

“I left school and took the train up to see him the very next day, not because I thought it would mean so much to him to have me there, but to prove to my mother that I was a better person than she was: I was willing to be inconvenienced by someone else's suffering.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

“Having a trash chute was one of my favorite things about my building. It made me feel important, like I was participating in the world. My trash mixed with the trash of others. The things I touched touched things other people had touched. I was contributing. I was connecting.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh

“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

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”
― Horace Mann

“Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?”
― Voltaire, Candide

“She blushed and so did he. She greeted him in a faltering voice, and he spoke to her without knowing what he was saying.”
― Candide, Candide

“Let us work without reasoning,' said Martin; 'it is the only way to make life endurable.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“And ask each passenger to tell his story, and if there is one of them all who has not cursed his existence many times, and said to himself over and over again that he was the most miserable of men, I give you permission to throw me head-first into the sea.”
― Voltaire, Candide, or, Optimism

“He wanted to know how they prayed to God in El Dorado. "We do not pray to him at all," said the reverend sage. "We have nothing to ask of him. He has given us all we want, and we give him thanks continually.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Secret griefs are more cruel than public calamities.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“He was my equal in beauty, a paragon of grace and charm, sparkling with wit, and burning with love. I adored him to distraction, to the point of idolatry: I loved him as one can never love twice.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“How many plays have been written in France?' Candide asked the abbe.

'Five or six thousand.'

'That's a lot,' said Candide. 'How many of them are good?'

'Fifteen or sixteen,' replied the abbe.

'That's a lot,' said Martin.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“There is some pleasure in having no pleasure.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Everywhere the weak execrate the powerful, before whom they cringe; and the powerful beat them like sheep whose wool and flesh they sell.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“when man was put into the garden of eden, he was put there with the idea that he should work the land; and this proves that man was not born to be idle.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“But in this country it is necessary, now and then, to put one admiral to death in order to inspire the others to fight.”
― Voltaire, Candide, or, Optimism

“It is noble to write as one thinks; this is the privilege of humanity.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“فقال كانديد: «أعلم أيضا أنه يجب أن نزرع حديقتنا». وقال بانغلوس: «أنت محق: لأنهُ عندما وضِع الإنسان في جنة عدن، كان ذلك ليعمل.. مما يثبت أن الإنسان لم يولد للراحة». فقال مارتن: «فلنعمل بلا تفكير: هذه هي الوسيلة الوحيدة لجعل الحياة تُحتمل».”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Do you believe," said Candide, "that men have always massacred each other as they do to-day, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?" "Do you believe," said Martin, "that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found them?" "Yes, without doubt," said Candide. "Well, then," said Martin, "if hawks have always had the same character why should you imagine that men may have changed theirs?”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Pangloss most cruelly deceived me when he said that everything in the world is for the best.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“A great work must be novel without being far-fetched, frequently sublime, but always natural. The author must know the human heart, and how to make it speak; he must be a poet, without letting any of his characters speak like poets; and he must be a master of his language, using it purely and harmoniously and not letting the rhyme interfere with the sense.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Oh! what a superior man," said Candide below his breath. "What a great genius is this Pococurante! Nothing can please him.”
― Voltaire, Candide