2026 Reading Challenge

Darwin8u > Darwin8u's Quotes

Showing 1-30 of 254
« previous 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
sort by

    like
  • #1
    Marcus Aurelius
    “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”
    ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
    tags: life, sanity
    1268 likes

    • like
  • #2
    John Fowles
    “...there are times when silence is a poem.”
    ― John Fowles, The Magus
    tags: poetry, silence
    36 likes

    • like
  • #3
    George Orwell
    “In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
    ― George Orwell
    tags: truth
    8510 likes

    • like
  • #4
    “Gerald Westerby, he told himself. You were present at your birth. You were present at your several marriages and at some of your divorces, and you will certainly be present at your funeral. High time, in our considered view, that you were present at certain other crucial moments in your history.”
    ― John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy
    14 likes

    • like
  • #5
    “Yet it's not for want of future that I'm here, he thought. It's for want of a present.”
    ― John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy
    tags: future, lack, life, present, purpose
    17 likes

    • like
  • #6
    “Home's where you go when you run out of homes.”
    ― John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy
    tags: anchoring, attachment, belonging, home, homecoming, homelessness, roots
    1391 likes

    • like
  • #7
    Samuel Beckett
    “It's so nice to know where you're going, in the early stages. It almost rids you of the wish to go there.”
    ― Samuel Beckett, Molloy
    tags: beckett, destination, resignation
    48 likes

    • like
  • #8
    Henry David Thoreau
    “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”
    ― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods
    tags: afford, let-alone, natural, rich, wealth
    692 likes

    • like
  • #9
    Henry David Thoreau
    “We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.”
    ― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods
    tags: environment, exploration, explore, land, mysterious, mystery, nature, sea, unexplorable, unfathomable, wild, wilderness, wildness
    1504 likes

    • like
  • #10
    William Faulkner
    “Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.
    Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.”
    ― William Faulkner
    7214 likes

    • like
  • #11
    “Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings. Following complex story lines stretches our brains beyond the 140 characters of sound-bite thinking, and staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps.”
    ― Ann Patchett
    tags: fiction, reading
    46 likes

    • like
  • #12
    Vladimir Nabokov
    “Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Like the crowd greeting the gladiator. Don't stop to think, don't interrupt the scream, exhale, release life's rapture.”
    ― Vladimir Nabokov
    1368 likes

    • like
  • #13
    John Steinbeck
    “It has always seemed strange to me...The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.”
    ― John Steinbeck, Cannery Row
    tags: life
    1335 likes

    • like
  • #14
    Anne Lamott
    “You can either practice being right or practice being kind.”
    ― Anne Lamott
    792 likes

    • like
  • #15
    David Foster Wallace
    “The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.”
    ― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
    tags: freedom, truth
    3016 likes

    • like
  • #16
    Flannery O'Connor
    “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
    ― Flannery O'Connor
    tags: truth
    5548 likes

    • like
  • #17
    Howard Nemerov
    “Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.”
    ― Howard Nemerov
    tags: humor, knowledge, literature, writing
    2252 likes

    • like
  • #18
    John Steinbeck
    “There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.”
    ― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
    3541 likes

    • like
  • #19
    William Gaddis
    “Justice? -You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law.”
    ― William Gaddis, A Frolic of His Own
    tags: justice, law
    189 likes

    • like
  • #20
    William Gaddis
    “If it is not beautiful for someone, it does not exist.”
    ― William Gaddis, The Recognitions
    89 likes

    • like
  • #21
    William Gaddis
    “If you want to make a million you don't have to understand money, what you have to understand is people's fears about money”
    ― William Gaddis, J R
    tags: fears, money
    52 likes

    • like
  • #22
    William Gaddis
    “Tragedy was foresworn, in ritual denial of the ripe knowledge that we are drawing away from one another, that we share only one thing, share the fear of belonging to another, or to others, or to God; love or money, tender equated in advertising and the world, where only money is currency, and under dead trees and brittle ornaments prehensile hands exchange forgeries of what the heart dare not surrender.”
    ― William Gaddis, The Recognitions
    33 likes

    • like
  • #23
    William Gaddis
    “He walked out into the cold morning asking himself this heretical question: Can you start measuring a minute at any instant you wish?”
    ― William Gaddis, The Recognitions
    17 likes

    • like
  • #24
    Vladimir Nabokov
    “Do not be angry with the rain; it simply does not know how to fall upwards.”
    ― Vladimir Nabokov
    tags: rain
    1284 likes

    • like
  • #25
    Vladimir Nabokov
    “The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.”
    ― Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
    476 likes

    • like
  • #26
    Vladimir Nabokov
    “If a violin string could ache, I would be that string.”
    ― Vladimir Nobokov
    tags: pain
    280 likes

    • like
  • #27
    Vladimir Nabokov
    “I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all.”
    ― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
    tags: ego, hubris, humble, modesty
    274 likes

    • like
  • #28
    William H. Gass
    “I don't know myself, what to do, where to go... I lie in the crack of a book for my comfort... it's what the world offers... please leave me alone to dream as I fancy.”
    ― William H. Gass, Omensetter's Luck
    105 likes

    • like
  • #29
    George Orwell
    “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
    ― George Orwell
    tags: military, police, violence
    988 likes

    • like
  • #30
    Cormac McCarthy
    “Men of God and men of war have strange affinities.”
    ― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West
    253 likes



Rss
« previous 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
All Quotes



Tags From Darwin8u’s Quotes

life
sanity
poetry
silence
truth
future
lack
present
purpose
anchoring
attachment
belonging
home
homecoming
homelessness
roots
beckett
destination
resignation
afford
let-alone
natural
rich
wealth
environment
exploration
explore
land
mysterious
mystery
nature
sea
unexplorable
unfathomable
wild
wilderness
wildness
fiction
reading
freedom
humor
knowledge
literature
writing
justice
law
fears
money
rain
pain
ego
hubris
humble
modesty
military
police
violence