Kelly > Kelly's Quotes

“Everything exists, everything is true and the earth is just a bit of dust beneath our feet.”
― William Butler Yeats

“By means of all created things, without excaption, the divine assails us, penetrates us, and molds us. We imagined it as distant and inaccessible, when in fact we live steeped in its burning layers”
― Teillard de Chardin

“...and that's the blank unholy suprise of it.”
― Donald Stewart

“Never say you know the last word about any human heart.”
― Henry James

“I call people rich when they're able to meet the requirements of their imagination.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“Keep reading books, but remember that a book’s only a book, and you should learn to think for yourself.”
― Maxim Gorky

“The good qualities in our soul are most successfully and forcefully awakened by the power of art. Just as science is the intellect of the world, art is its soul.”
― Maxim Gorky, Untimely Thoughts: Essays on Revolution, Culture, and the Bolsheviks, 1917-1918

“I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Maybe...you'll fall in love with me all over again."
"Hell," I said, "I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?"
"Yes. I want to ruin you."
"Good," I said. "That's what I want too.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

“I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
Like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.”
― Pablo Neruda

“For all I know,he may be a prince in disguise; he rather looks like one, by the way- like a prince who has abdicated in a fit of magnanimity, and has been in a state of disgust ever since.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want to summon
the eyes and hidden mouths
of stone and light and water
to testify against you. ”
― Leonard Cohen

“To All My Mariners in One

Forget the many who talk much, say little, mean less and matter least
Forget we live in times when broadcasts of Tchaikovsky's 5th
precede announcements of the death of tyrants.
Forget that life for governments is priced war cheap but kidnap high
Our seamanship is not with such.
From port to port we learn that "depths last longer than heights",
that years are meant to disappear like wakes,
that nothing but the sun stands still.
We share the sweeter alphabets of laughter and the slower languages of pain.
Common as coal, we find in one another's eyes
the quiet diamonds that are worth the world.
Drawn by the song of our keel, who are we but horizons coming true?
Let others wear their memories like jewelry
We're of the few who work apart so well,
together when we must.
We speak cathedrals when we speak and
trust no promise but the pure supremacy of tears.
What more can we expect?
The sea's blue mischief may be waiting for its time and place,
but still we have the stars to guide us,
we have the winds for company.
We have ourselves.
We have the sailor's faith that not even dying can divide us.”
― Samuel Hazo, The Holy Surprise of Right Now: Selected and New Poems

“I'm planning a catastrophe.”
― Leonard Cohen, The Favorite Game

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“And I can't be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
― Andre Gide

“Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backward.”
― E.E. Cummings

“I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“I've often thought there ought to be a manual to hand to little kids, telling them what kind of planet they're on, why they don't fall off it, how much time they've probably got here, how to avoid poison ivy, and so on. I tried to write one once. It was called Welcome to Earth. But I got stuck on explaining why we don't fall off the planet. Gravity is just a word. It doesn't explain anything. If I could get past gravity, I'd tell them how we reproduce, how long we've been here, apparently, and a little bit about evolution. I didn't learn until I was in college about all the other cultures, and I should have learned that in the first grade. A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn't a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativity is defensible and attractive. It's also a source of hope. It means we don't have to continue this way if we don't like it.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“People say there are no atheists in foxholes. A lot of people think this is a good argument against atheism. Personally, I think it's a much better argument against foxholes.”
― Kurt Vonnegut