Nicole > Nicole's Quotes

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I can resist anything except temptation.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. (Mr. Dumby, Act III)”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“A passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young.”
― Oscar Wilde

“It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.”
― Oscar Wilde

“It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the PRIVACY of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.”
― Dostoyevsky Fyodor

“I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.”
― Antonio Gramsci, Antonio Gramsci: Prison Letters

“Pessimism of the spirit; optimism of the will.”
― Antonio Gramsci

“The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul.”
― Wassily Kandinsky

“With cold eyes and indifferent mind the spectators regard the work. Connoissers admire the "skill" (as one admires a tightrope walker), enjoy the "quality of painting" (as one enjoys a pasty). But hungry souls go hungry away. The vulgar herd stroll through the rooms and pronounce the pictures "nice" or "splendid." Those who could speak have said nothing, those who could hear have heard nothing.”
― Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art

“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.”
― Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

“The madman is a dreamer awake”
― S. Freud

“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
― Anaïs Nin

“If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“You complain
because things don't arrange themselves around you like a bouquet of flowers, without your taking the
slightest trouble to do anything. But I have never asked as much: I wanted action. You know, when we
played adventurer and adventuress: you were the one who had adventures, I was the one who made
them happen.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.”
― Voltaire

“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”
― Voltaire

“I don’t know where I am going, but I am on my way.”
― Voltaire

“I am a passionate seeker after Truth and a not less passionate enemy of the malignant fictions used
by the "Party of Order", the official representatives of all turpitudes, religious, metaphysical,
political, judicial, economic, and social, present and past, to brutalise and enslave the world; I am a
fanatical lover of Liberty; considering it as the only medium in which can develop intelligence,
dignity, and the happiness of man;”
― Mikhail Bakunin, Marxism, Freedom and the State

“We revolutionary anarchists are the enemies of all forms of State and State organisations ... we
think that all State rule, all governments being by their very nature placed outside the mass of the
people, must necessarily seek to subject it to customs and purposes entirely foreign to it. We
therefore declare ourselves to be foes ... of all State organisations as such, and believe that the
people can only be happy and free, when, organised from below by means of its own autonomous
and completely free associations, without the supervision of any guardians, it will create its own
life.”
― Mikhail Bakunin

“Many journalists now are no more than channelers and echoers of what George Orwell called the 'official truth'. They simply cipher and transmit lies. It really grieves me that so many of my fellow journalists can be so manipulated that they become really what the French describe as 'functionaires', functionaries, not journalists. Many journalists become very defensive when you suggest to them that they are anything but impartial and objective. The problem with those words 'impartiality' and 'objectivity' is that they have lost their dictionary meaning. They've been taken over... [they] now mean the establishment point of view... Journalists don't sit down and think, 'I'm now going to speak for the establishment.' Of course not. But they internalise a whole set of assumptions, and one of the most potent assumptions is that the world should be seen in terms of its usefulness to the West, not humanity.”
― John Pilger

“The major western democracies are moving towards corporatism. Democracy has become a business plan, with a bottom line for every human activity, every dream, every decency, every hope. The main parliamentary parties are now devoted to the same economic policies — socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor — and the same foreign policy of servility to endless war. This is not democracy. It is to politics what McDonalds is to food.”
― John Pilger

“Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.”
― Émile Zola

“The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.”
― Émile Zola

“Art is a corner of creation seen through a temperament.”
― Emile Zola