Jonathan > Jonathan's Quotes

“The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man”
― T.S. Eliot

“Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky”
― T.S. Eliot, Selected Poems

“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
― Charles Bukowski

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“The Wise are silent, the Foolish speak, and children are thus led astray.”
― Algernon Blackwood

“Not easily may an individual escape the deep slavery of the herd.”
― Algernon Blackwood

“Everyone has talent. What's rare is the courage to follow it to the dark places where it leads.”
― Erica Jong

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
― Albert Einstein

“All is ephemeral, both what remembers and what is remembered.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”
― Franz Kafka

“Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be … when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am.”
― Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

“Therefore it was not pride that took me into the village twice a week, or even stubbornness, but only the simple need for books and food.”
― Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

“. . . if there is a way for the world to be transformed for the better, it can only be done by pessimism; optimists will never change the world for the better. ”
― Jose Saramago / ژوزه ساراماگو

“There are too many books I haven’t read, too many places I haven’t seen, too many memories I haven’t kept long enough.”
― Irwin Shaw

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.”
― David Foster Wallace , This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

“A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it's a joke.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part I

“Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
― Alfred Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King and a Selection of Poems

“the majority of people go past the doors that are half ajar, thinking them closed, and fail to notice the faint stirrings of the great curtain that hangs ever in the form of appearances between them and the world of causes behind.”
― Algernon Blackwood, Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“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

“The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.”
― William H. Gass, A Temple of Texts

“If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.”
― Frank Zappa

“I stay cool, and dig all jive,
That's the way I stay alive.
My motto,
as I live and learn,
is
Dig and be dug
In return.”
― Langston Hughes

“Harlem

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?”
― Langston Hughes, The Collected Poems

“Everything in life is just for a while.”
― Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly