Daniel Løve > Daniel's Quotes

“Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.”
― Voltaire

“I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?”
― Voltaire, Candide, or, Optimism

“Our labour preserves us from three great evils -- weariness, vice, and want.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“He showed, in a few words, that it is not sufficient to throw together a few incidents that are to be met with in every romance, and that to dazzle the spectator the thought should be new, without being farfetched; frequently sublime, but always natural; the author should have a thorough knowledge of the human heart and make it speak properly; he should be a complete poet, without showing an affectation of it in any of the characters of his piece; he should be a perfect master of his language, speak it with all its pruity and with the utmost harmony, and yet so as not to make the sense a slave to the rhyme. Whoever, added he, neglects any one of these rules, though he may write two or three tragedies with tolerable success, will never be reckoned in the number of good authors.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“The supper passed at first like most Parisian suppers, in silence, followed by a noise of words which could not be distinguished, then with pleasantries of which most were insipid, with false news, with bad reasoning, a little politics, and much evil speaking; they also discussed new books.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“while the earth, which in reality is only an imperceptible point in nature, appears to our fond imaginations as something so grand and noble. He then represented to himself the human species, as it really is, as a parcel of insects devouring one another on a little atom of clay. This true image seemed to annihilate his misfortunes, by making him sensible of the nothingness of his own being”
― Voltaire, Zadig et autres contes

“In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost. Ah, how hard a thing it is to tell what a wild, and rough, and stubborn wood this was, which in my thought renews the fear!”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso

“In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself within a dark woods where the straight way was lost.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“I love mankind, he said, "but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“To love someone means to see them as God intended them.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god.
Thoughts of a Biologist”
― Jean Rostand

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Good is good in the final hour, in the deepest pit – without hope, without witness, without reward. Virtue is only virtue in extremis.”
― Steven Moffat

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

“Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“One original thought is worth a thousand mindless quotings.”
― Diogenes Laërtius

“Time is the most valuable thing that a man can spend.”
― Diogenes

“Step out of my sunlight.”
― Diogenes Laertius

“Why not whip the teacher when the student misbehaves?”
― Diogenes

“The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.”
― Thucydides

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

“When will there be justice in Athens? There will be justice in Athens when those who are not injured are as outraged as those who are.”
― Thucydides

“Ignorance is bold, and knowledge is reserved”
― Thucydides

“You should punish in the same manner those who commit crimes with those who accuse falsely.”
― Thucydides

“When one is deprived of ones liberty, one is right in blaming not so much the man who puts the shackles on as the one who had the power to prevent him, but did not use it.”
― Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

“War is a matter not so much of arms as of money.”
― Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

“A man who has the knowledge but lacks the power clearly to express it is no better off than if he never had any ideas at all.”
― Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War

“It is frequently a misfortune to have very brilliant men in charge of affairs. They expect too much of ordinary men.”
― Thucydides