Big Books of 2026

Bret > Bret's Quotes

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  • #1
    Vladimir Nabokov
    “The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for.”
    ― Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory
    tags: abyss, afterlife, calm, common-sense, cradle, darkness, death, eternity, existence, life, life-after-death, light, man
    104 likes

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  • #2
    Hunter S. Thompson
    “There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.”
    ― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream
    658 likes

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  • #3
    Hunter S. Thompson
    “I would feel real trapped in this life if I didn't know I could commit suicide at any time.”
    ― Hunter S. Thompson
    175 likes

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  • #4
    Arthur Schopenhauer
    “One should use common words to say uncommon things”
    ― Arthur Schopenhauer
    tags: clarity, naivete, simplicity, writing
    895 likes

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  • #5
    Arthur Schopenhauer
    “Der Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will.

    Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.”
    ― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms
    tags: determinism, free-will, idealism, pessimism
    816 likes

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  • #6
    Arthur Schopenhauer
    “It would be better if there were nothing. Since there is more pain than pleasure on earth, every satisfaction is only transitory, creating new desires and new distresses, and the agony of the devoured animal is always far greater than the pleasure of the devourer”
    ― Arthur Schopenhauer
    440 likes

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  • #7
    Arthur Schopenhauer
    “So the problem is not so much to see what nobody has yet seen, as to think what nobody has yet thought concerning that which everybody sees.”
    ― Arthur Schopenhauer
    tags: misattributed-erwin-schrödinger
    363 likes

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  • #8
    Arthur Schopenhauer
    “Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability.”
    ― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms
    309 likes

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  • #9
    Arthur Schopenhauer
    “Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.”
    ― Arthur Schopenhauer
    223 likes

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  • #10
    Arthur Schopenhauer
    “the world is my idea”
    ― Arthur Schopenhauer
    167 likes

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  • #11
    Arthur Schopenhauer
    “Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.”
    ― Arthur Schopenhauer
    tags: drink, fame, thirsty, wealth
    188 likes

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  • #12
    Arthur Schopenhauer
    “We seldom think of what we have, but always of what we lack.”
    ― Arthur Schopenhauer
    143 likes

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  • #13
    Arthur Schopenhauer
    “there are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion; and what remains but to take it ready-made from others, instead of forming opinions for himself?”
    ― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Art of Always Being Right
    tags: philosophical
    116 likes

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  • #14
    Arthur Schopenhauer
    “If we suspect that a man is lying, we should pretend to believe him; for then he becomes bold and assured, lies more vigorously, and is unmasked.”
    ― Arthur Schopenhauer
    tags: liars, lying
    132 likes

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  • #15
    Arthur Schopenhauer
    “Reading is thinking with someone else's head instead of ones own.”
    ― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Art of Literature
    tags: art-of-literature, reading, schopenhauer
    111 likes

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  • #16
    Arthur Schopenhauer
    “After your death, you will be what you were before your birth.”
    ― Arthur Schopenhauer
    tags: afterlife, birth, death, life, life-after-death, metaphysics, philosophy
    125 likes

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  • #17
    Arthur Schopenhauer
    “There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.”
    ― Arthur Schopenhauer
    tags: absurdity, indoctrination, youth
    50 likes

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  • #18
    Arthur Schopenhauer
    “The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.”
    ― Arthur Schopenhauer
    88 likes

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  • #19
    Arthur Schopenhauer
    “Animals hear about death for the first time when they die.”
    ― Arthur Schopenhauer
    60 likes

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  • #20
    Arthur Schopenhauer
    “Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.”
    ― Arthur Schopenhauer
    72 likes

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  • #21
    Arthur Schopenhauer
    “Each day is a little life.”
    ― Arthur Schopenhauer
    60 likes

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  • #22
    Arthur Schopenhauer
    “Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.”
    ― Arthur Schopenhauer
    121 likes

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  • #23
    Oscar Wilde
    “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
    ― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
    tags: identity, opinions
    11874 likes

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  • #24
    Oscar Wilde
    “To define is to limit.”
    ― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
    tags: dandy, lord-henry-wotton, wilde
    6023 likes

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  • #25
    Oscar Wilde
    “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”
    ― Oscar Wilde (attributed to)
    tags: classic-insult
    5144 likes

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  • #26
    Jack Kerouac
    “[...]the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
    ― Jack Kerouac, On the Road
    tags: freethinker, inspirational, mad
    11473 likes

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  • #27
    Jack Kerouac
    “There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”
    ― Jack Kerouac, On the Road: The Original Scroll
    4619 likes

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  • #28
    Jack Kerouac
    “I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference.”
    ― Jack Kerouac
    1020 likes

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  • #29
    George Santayana
    “Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable; what it is or what it means can never be said.”
    ― George Santayana
    tags: fiction, personal-growth, philosophy, self-esteem, self-help
    47 likes

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  • #30
    George Santayana
    “The fact of having been born is a bad augury for immortality.”
    ― George Santayana, The Life of Reason: Five Volumes in One
    tags: birth, death, immortality
    18 likes



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Tags From Bret’s Quotes

abyss
afterlife
calm
common-sense
cradle
darkness
death
eternity
existence
life
life-after-death
light
man
clarity
naivete
simplicity
writing
determinism
free-will
idealism
pessimism
misattributed-erwin-schrödinger
drink
fame
thirsty
wealth
philosophical
liars
lying
art-of-literature
reading
schopenhauer
birth
metaphysics
philosophy
absurdity
indoctrination
youth
identity
opinions
dandy
lord-henry-wotton
wilde
classic-insult
freethinker
inspirational
mad
fiction
personal-growth
self-esteem
self-help
immortality