Pantelis > Pantelis's Quotes

“To all the talented young men who wander about feeling that there is nothing in the world for them to do, I should say: 'Give up trying to write, and, instead, try not to write. Go out into the world; become a pirate, a king in Borneo, a labourer in Soviet Russia; give yourself an existence in which the satisfaction of elementary physical needs will occupy almost all your energies.' I do not recommend this course of action to everyone, but only to those who suffer from the disease which Mr Krutch diagnoses. I believe that, after some years of such an existence, the ex-intellectual will fin that in spite of is efforts he can no longer refrain from writing, and when this time comes his writing will not seem to him futile.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

“The wise man thinks about his troubles only when there is some purpose in doing so; at other times he thinks about other things, or, if it is night, about nothing at all.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

“Altogether it will be found that a quiet life is characteristic of great men, and that their pleasures have not been of the sort that would look exciting to the outward eye.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

“I do not myself think there is any superior rationality in being unhappy. The wise man will be as happy as circumstances permit, and if he finds contemplation of the universe painful beyond a point, he will contemplate something else instead.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

“Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.”
― Alfred Adler

“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.”
― C.G. Jung

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Invisible threads are the strongest ties.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Cynicism is the only form in which base souls approach honesty.”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

“The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.”
― Anais Nin

“Societies in decline have no use for visionaries.”
― Anais Nin

“There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.”
― Anais Nin, Journals of Anais Nin Volume 3

“Two Kinds of People

There are two kinds of people on earth today,
Two kinds of people no more I say.
Not the good or the bad, for it's well understood,
The good are half bad, the bad are half good.

Not the happy or sad, for in the swift-flying years,
Bring each man his laughter, each man his tears.
Not the rich or the poor, for to count a man's wealth,
You must know the state of his conscience and health.

Not the humble and proud, for in life's busy span,
Who puts on vain airs is not counted a man.
No! the two kinds of people on earth I mean,
Are the people who lift, the people who lean.

Wherever you go you'll find the world's masses
Are ever divided into these two classes.
And, strangely enough, you will find, too, I mean,
There is only one lifter to twenty who lean.

In which class are you? Are you easing the load
Of the overtaxed lifters who toiled down the road?
Or are you a leaner who lets others bear,
Your portion of worry and labor and care?”
― Ella Wheeler Wilcox

“We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeting guest;
And deal full many a thoughtless blow,
To those who love us best.”
― Ella Wheeler Wilcox

“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drink, the very air I breathe, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four o'clock in the morning.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Closing your eyes isn't going to change anything. Nothing's going to disappear just because you can't see what's going on. In fact, things will even be worse the next time you open your eyes. That's the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won't make time stand still.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Θυμάμαι πόσο βαθιά πληγώθηκα όταν ύστερα από κάποιους μήνες στην ασφάλεια, με πετάξανε σ’ ένα τζιπ, δεμένο με χειροπέδες παρόλο που δεν μπορούσα να σταθώ όρθιος, περπάταγα με τα τέσσερα, με φορτώνουν, που λες, σ' ένα τζιπ για το Γεντί Κουλέ. Ήξερα ότι πάω για θάνατο , μου το 'χαν πει σ' όλους τους τόνους στην ασφάλεια. Ήταν Σάββατο απόγευμα, καλοκαίρι. Θα 'χε μπει για τα καλά ο Ιούλιος. Περνάγαμε απ' το Βαρδάρι, είχαν σκολάσει τα μαγαζιά, ο κόσμος μυρμήγκιαζε στους δρόμους, φορτωμένος ψώνια. Ακούμπησα τα χέρια μου με τις χειροπέδες στο παραπέτο του τζιπ, μια ματιά, μια ματιά… Ο ένας από τους χαφιέδες με κατάλαβε. «Βλέπεις ρε μαλάκα; Ποιος νοιάζεται για σένα; Λες ότι πας να πεθάνεις γι’ αυτούς, ποιος σε ξέρει; Τους βλέπεις; Κάνουν τα ψώνια τους, θα πάνε σπίτι τους, αύριο στα βαποράκια, Περαία, Μπαξέ, Αρετσού, θάλασσα, παιχνίδι, κορίτσια, ποιος νοιάζεται για σένα, μαλάκα; Πας για εκτέλεση, κι είσαι μονάχα δεκάξι χρονών...»”
― Χρόνης Μίσσιος, ... καλά, ἐσύ σκοτώθηκες νωρίς

“Is it in these bottomless nights that you sleep in exile?”
― Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell and The Drunken Boat

“It began as research. I wrote of silences, of nights, I scribbled the indescribable. I tied down the vertigo.”
― Arthur Rimbaud

“The Wild still lingered in him and the wolf in him merely slept.”
― Jack London, White Fang

“But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and sounds as a man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something that called -- called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come.”
― Jack London, The Call of the Wild

“To be able to forget means sanity.”
― Jack London, The Star Rover

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“For all eternity, I forgive you and you forgive me.”
― William Blake

“He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.”
― William Blake

“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods