Medeea Em > Medeea's Quotes

“Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.”
― Hermann Hesse

“I'm astounded whenever I finish something. Astounded and distressed. My perfectionist instinct should inhibit me from finishing: it should inhibit me from even beginning. But I get distracted and start doing something. What I achieve is not the product of an act of my will but of my will's surrender. I begin because I don't have the strength to think; I finish because I don't have the courage to quit. This book is my cowardice.”
― Fernando Pessoa

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.”
― J.D. Salinger

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“I've never been lonely. I've been in a room -- I've felt suicidal. I've been depressed. I've felt awful -- awful beyond all -- but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me...or that any number of people could enter that room. In other words, loneliness is something I've never been bothered with because I've always had this terrible itch for solitude. It's being at a party, or at a stadium full of people cheering for something, that I might feel loneliness. I'll quote Ibsen, "The strongest men are the most alone." I've never thought, "Well, some beautiful blonde will come in here and give me a fuck-job, rub my balls, and I'll feel good." No, that won't help. You know the typical crowd, "Wow, it's Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there?" Well, yeah. Because there's nothing out there. It's stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidify themselves. I've never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. I hid in bars, because I didn't want to hide in factories. That's all. Sorry for all the millions, but I've never been lonely. I like myself. I'm the best form of entertainment I have. Let's drink more wine!”
― Charles Bukowski

“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”
― Sigmund Freud

“You're either growing or dying. Stagnation does not exist in the universe.”
― Steve Siebold, 177 Mental Toughness Secrets of the World Class: The Thought Processes, Habits and Philosophies of the Great Ones

“Mai întâi cunoști pe cineva - cineva care e cu totul diferit de cei din jurul tău. Cineva care vede totul într-o altă lumină și te silește să te schimbi, să-ți modifici unghiul de vedere, să observi din nou totul, dinăuntru și din afară. Crezi că poți păstra o distanță sigură față de el. Crezi că poți să-ți croiești drum prin această furtună minunată până când îți dai seama, mult prea brusc, că ești împins sub cerul liber și că de fapt nu poți controla nimic.”
― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

“Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neighborhood of despair. Even when all doors remain closed, God will open up a new path only for you. Be thankful!”
― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

“Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough.”
― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

“Do not go with the flow. Be the flow.”
― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

“Where there is power, there is resistance.”
― Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction

“People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does.”
― Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason

“Utopia lies at the horizon.
When I draw nearer by two steps,
it retreats two steps.
If I proceed ten steps forward, it
swiftly slips ten steps ahead.
No matter how far I go, I can never reach it.
What, then, is the purpose of utopia?
It is to cause us to advance.”
― Eduardo Galeano

“I'm old-fashioned and think that reading books is the most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised.”
― Wislawa Szymborska, Nonrequired Reading

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.”
― Anais Nin

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“Toata ziua vezi o multime de oameni.Vorbesti cu ei,razi cu ei,ai chiar prieteni,iubesti cateodata,crezi sa te intelegi,ba si comuniezi si nu pot zice ca uneori nu reusesti s-o faci.Dar toate acestea nu te impiedica sa fii singura,ingrozitor de singura.Esti legata de solitudinea ta pentru todeauna,de todeauna.Sunt eu si numai eu si tot timpul gandesc,deci ma schimb tot timpul,deci nimeni nu ma poate cunoaste cu adevarat.Eu ma stiu,ma inteleg si nu ma stiu si nu ma inteleg decat pe mine,pe nimeni altul decat mine.Eu ma iubesc si ma dispretuiesc si uneori as vrea sa ma bat-atat de dezgustator de imperfecta ma simt.”
― Jeni Acterian, Jurnalul unei fete greu de mulţumit

“When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.”
― Wisława Szymborska, Poems New and Collected

“Let the people who never find true love
keep saying that there's no such thing.

Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.”
― Wislawa Szymborska, View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems

“The joy of writing.
The power of preserving.
Revenge of a mortal hand.”
― Wisława Szymborska

“Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire. The emotion derives from a double contact: on the one hand, a whole activity of discourse discreetly, indirectly focuses upon a single signified, which is "I desire you," and releases, nourishes, ramifies it to the point of explosion (language experiences orgasm upon touching itself); on the other hand, I enwrap the other in my words, I caress, brush against, talk up this contact, I extend myself to make the commentary to which I submit the relation endure. ”
― Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

“Someone tells me: this kind of love is not viable. But how can you evaluate viability? Why is the viable a Good Thing? Why is it better to last than to burn?”
― Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

“Absența lui îmi umple ceasuri întregi. Absența lui e altfel, dar îi seamănă, fără să fie totuși el. Stă lângă mine în clipa când mă așez la masă, mă însoțește în plimbările de după-masă. Sunt îndrăgostită de absența lui.”
― Margarita Liberaki, Τα ψάθινα καπέλα

“They looked down on her; and she looked up through them.”
― John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman

“For him the tragedy of Homo sapiens is that the least fit to survive breed the most.”
― John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman

“I say "her," but the pronoun is one of the most terrifying masks man has invented; what came to Charles was not a pronoun, but eyes, looks, the line of the hair over a temple, a nimble step, a sleeping face.”
― John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman, The French Lieutenant’s Woman

“Thus it had come about that she had read far more fiction, and far more poetry, those two sanctuaries of the lonely, than most of her kind.”
― John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman

“Earth Breathes in Us.”
― Matthew Edward Hall