Ara > Ara's Quotes

“Grace paused. And while she did, the clouds scattered and let the moonlight through, and Dogville underwent another of those little changes of light.
lt was as if the light, previously so merciful and faint, finally refused to cover up for the town any longer.
Suddenly you could no longer imagine a berry that would appear one day on a gooseberry bush, but only see the thorn that was there right now.
The light now penetrated every unevenness and flaw in the buildings...
and in... the people!
And all of a sudden she knew the answer to her question all too well.
lf she had acted like them she could not have defended a single one of her actions and could not have condemned them harshly enough.
lt was as if her sorrow and pain had finally assumed their rightful place.
No. What they had done was not good enough. And if one had the power to put it to rights,
it was one's duty to do so.
For the sake of the other towns.
For the sake of humanity.
And not least for the sake of the human being that was Grace herself.”
― Lars Von Trier

“All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us. All of us--all who knew her--felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams we used--to silence our own nightmares. And she let us, and thereby deserved our contempt. We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength.

And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth, seeing in the new pattern of an old idea the Revelation and the Word.”
― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

“People don't have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love. Then, when you're dead, when they've killed you by what they made you go through, they say you didn't have any character. They weep big, bitter tears - not for you. For themselves, because they've lost their toy.”
― James Baldwin, Another Country

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“You could not be born at a better period than the present, when we have lost everything.”
― Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

“You should think about nobody and go your own way, not on a course marked out for you by people holding mugs of water and bottles of iodine in case you fall and cut yourself so that they can pick you up - even if you want to stay where you are - and get you moving again.”
― Alan Sillitoe, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner

“Cut away ruthlessly everything that is imaginary in your feelings.”
― Simone Weil, Simone Weil: An Anthology

“She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.”
― J.D. Salinger

“My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun -
In Corners - till a Day
The Owner passed - identified -
And carried Me away -”
― Emily Dickinson

“You still stand watch, O human star, burning without a flicker, perfect flame, bright and resourceful spirit. Each of your rays a great idea - O torch which passes from hand to hand, from age to age, world without end.”
― Karel Čapek

“You don't have to teach people how to be human. You have to teach them how to stop being inhuman.”
― Eldridge Cleaver

“Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.”
― W.E.B. DuBois

“I never realized that a child is capable of remembering so well and of waiting so patiently”
― Janusz Korczak, Loving Every Child: Wisdom for Parents

“A rock was sticking out of the water, jagged and pointed, covered with moss--a remnant of the Ice Age. It had withstood the rains, the snows, the frost, the heat. It was afraid of no one. It did not need redemption, it had already been redeemed.”
― Issac Bashevis Singer

“Something that's obvious to a lot of people but it's never said much on the television or anything, that the architects and planners and whatever in London are inhuman to a really disgusting extent.”
― Shane MacGowan

“You are outside life, you are above life, you have miseries which the ordinary man does not know, you exceed the normal level, and it is for this that men refuse to forgive you, you poison their peace of mind, you undermine their stability. You have irrepressible pains whose essence is to be inadaptable to any known state, indescribable in words. You have repeated and shifting pains, incurable pains, pains beyond imagining, pains which are neither of the body nor of the soul, but which partake of both. And I share your suffering, and I ask you: who dares to ration our relief?... We are not going to kill ourselves just yet. In the meantime, leave us the hell alone.”
― Antonin Artaud

“Hurry hurry, cram yourself full of dreams to carry you through the life that's waiting for you outside, when you leave here, to help you last a few days more in that nightmare of things and people. Among the dreams, choose the ones most likely to warm your soul.”
― Louis-Ferdinand Céline

“The Old People brought down Tribulation, and were broken into fragments by it. Your father and his kind are a part of those fragments. They have become history without being aware of it. They are determined still that there is a final form to defend: soon they will attain the stability they strive for, in the only form it is granted—a place among the fossils.”
― John Wyndham, The Chrysalids

“I don't despise myself at all. I think I'm very honest, very brave, very sacrificing, I gave a lot to a lot of people. And all they gave me back is rotten tricks. That's all I see.”
― Louis-Ferdinand Céline

“This woman could call upon the earth and the heavens to do her bidding. But she gave up her power to be human. Write this into your record, Judge—this Ondine was the most human human being that ever lived. She was human by choice.”
― Jean Giraudoux, Ondine

“Life hurts a lot more than death. —Jim Morrison”
― Robert Kirkman, The Road to Woodbury

“Happy, no. I'm unhappy because I feel myself a victim of people's rotten tricks. It's not fair and I'll say it. And I'll die saying I was unfairly treated. I've been stripped, robbed, looted, mucked up, insulted from all directions, by people who don't deserve anything. Here is exactly what I think, and I haven't any inferiority or guilt complexes towards anyone. I feel all others are guilty, not me.”
― Louis-Ferdinand Céline

“The days of dealing with one despot are over. Now it's clearly with a whole group of frightened committee people.”
― John Schlesinger

“Remember, green’s your color. You are Spring.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks

“For long the two enemies looked at one another, Hook shuddering slightly, and Peter with the strange smile upon his face.
"So, Pan," said Hook at last, "this is all your doing."
"Ay, James Hook," came the stern answer, "it is all my doing."
"Proud and insolent youth," said Hook, "prepare to meet thy doom."
"Dark and sinister man," Peter answered, "have at thee.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“A good heart will help you to a bonny face, my lad and a bad one will turn the bonniest into something worse than ugly.”
― Emily Jane Brontë

“As human beings it is time to take responsibility for the power of our Intelligence and use the power of our intelligence to think coherently This isn't about whether we can or we can't This is about whether we will or we won't”
― John Trudell, Lines from a Mined Mind: The Words of John Trudell

“We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that.”
― Buenaventura Durruti

“Is death the last sleep? No, it is the last and final awakening.”
― Walter Scott

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities