Whatthehonk > Whatthehonk's Quotes

“How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

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

“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

“The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“because wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“It seemed silly to wash one day when I would only have to wash again the next.

It made me tired just to think of it.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“But I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure at all. How did I know that someday―at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere―the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I wondered why I couldn't go the whole way doing what I should any more. This made me sad and tired. Then I wondered why I couldn't go the whole way doing what I shouldn't, the way Doreen did, and this made me even sadder and more tired.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, should numb and cover them. But they were a part of me. They were my landscape.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“The weak fear happiness itself. They can harm themselves on cotton wool. Sometimes they are wounded even by happiness”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“The thought of dying has never bothered me, but getting hurt, losing blood, becoming crippled and the like—no thanks.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“What, I wondered, did he mean by “society”? The plural of human beings? Where was the substance of this thing called “society”? I had spent my whole life thinkng that society must certainly be something powerful, harsh and severe, but to hear Horiki talk made the words “Don’t you mean yourself?” come to the tip of my tongue. But I held the words back, reluctant to anger him.
‘Society won’t stand for it.’
‘It’s not society. You’re the one who won’t stand for it - right?’
‘If you do such a thing society will make you suffer for it’
‘It’s not society. It’s you, isn’t it?’
‘Before you know it, you’ll be ostracized by society.’
‘It’s not society. You’re going to do the ostracizing, aren’t you?’
Words, words of every kind went flitting through my head. “Know thy particular fearsomeness, thy knavery, cunning and witchcraft!” What I said, however, as I wiped the perspiration from my face with a handkerchief was merely, “You’ve put me in a cold sweat!” I smiled.
From then on, however, I came to hold, almost as a philosophical conviction, the belief: What is society but an individual?”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human