Vera Marques > Vera's Quotes

“- Falhamos a vida, menino!
- Creio que sim... Mas todo o mundo mais ou menos a falha. Isto é, falha-se sempre na realidade aquela vida que se planeou com a imaginação. Diz-se: «vou ser assim, porque a beleza está em ser assim». E nunca se é assim, é-se invariavelmente assado, como dizia o pobre marquês. Ás vezes melhor, mas sempre diferente.”
― José Maria Eça de Queirós, Os Maias

“I had jumped off the edge, and then, at the very last moment, something reached out and caught me in midair. That something is what I define as love. It is the one thing that can stop a man from falling, powerful enough to negate the laws of gravity.”
― Paul Auster, Moon Palace

“Libraries aren't in the real world, after all. They're places apart, sanctuaries of pure thought. In this way I can go on living on the moon for the rest of my life.”
― paul auster

“[El placer de comer] es un placer que hay que descubrir a los treinta años. Es la edad en que el ser humano deja de ser un imbécil y a cambio paga el precio de empezar a envejecer.”
― Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Los Mares Del Sur

“Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more.
Men were deceivers ever,
One foot in sea, and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.
Then sigh not so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into hey nonny, nonny.

Sing no more ditties, sing no more
Of dumps so dull and heavy.
The fraud of men was ever so
Since summer first was leafy.
Then sigh not so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into hey, nonny, nonny.”
― William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

“How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn't they paralyze us? How is it we can survive them, at least for a little while? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it no one sees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is it something we all hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we share the same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise?”
― Don DeLillo, White Noise

“... nada na geografia física ou humana, na economia ou na tradição das regiões que vieram a compor [o reino] determinava que se destacasse da restante Península o "rectângulo" que veio a construir-se como o reino mais ocidental da Europa.”
― Bernardo Vasconcelos e Sousa, História de Portugal

“The fear of barbarians is what risks making us barbarians.”
― Tzvetan Todorov

“Toutes les opinions ne se valent pas, et il ne faut pas confondre l'éloquence d'une parole avec la justesse d'une pensée.”
― Tzvetan Todorov, In Defence of the Enlightenment

“Sight isolates, sound incorporates. Whereas sight situates the observer outside what he views, at a distance, sound pours into the hearer. Vision dissects, as Merleau-Ponty has observed (1961). Vision comes to a human being from one direction at a time: to look at a room or a landscape, I must move my eyes around from one part to another. When I hear, however, I gather sound simultaneously from every directions at once; I am at the center of my auditory world, which envelopes me, establishing me at a kind of core of sensation and existence... You can immerse yourself in hearing, in sound. There is no way to immerse yourself similarly in sight.
By contrast with vision, the dissecting sense, sound is thus a unifying sense. A typical visual ideal is clarity and distinctness, a taking apart. The auditory ideal, by contrast, is harmony, a putting together.
Interiority and harmony are characteristics of human consciousness. The consciousness of each human person is totally interiorized, known to the person from the inside and inaccessible to any other person directly from the inside. Everyone who says 'I' means something different by it from what every other person means. What is 'I' to me is only 'you' to you...
In a primary oral culture, where the word has its existence only in sound... the phenomenology of sound enters deeply into human beings' feel for existence, as processed by the spoken word. For the way in which the word is experienced is always momentous in psychic life.”
― Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
― Isaac Asimov

“Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.”
― Henry James

“Há-de vir um Natal e será o primeiro
em que se veja à mesa o meu lugar vazio

Há-de vir um Natal e será o primeiro
em que hão-de me lembrar de modo menos nítido

Há-de vir um Natal e será o primeiro
em que só uma voz me evoque a sós consigo

Há-de vir um Natal e será o primeiro
em que não viva já ninguém meu conhecido

Há-de vir um Natal e será o primeiro
em que nem vivo esteja um verso deste livro

Há-de vir um Natal e será o primeiro
em que terei de novo o Nada a sós comigo

Há-de vir um Natal e será o primeiro
em que nem o Natal terá qualquer sentido

Há-de vir um Natal e será o primeiro
em que o Nada retome a cor do Infinito”
― David Mourão-Ferreira, Cancioneiro de Natal

“Consuelo: Away from them, I realised that they formed a circle, or rather a net in which they were enmeshed together. I was the only one out of it. Being near them only made me feel more alone.”
― Oscar Lewis

“All things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams.”
― Elias Canetti

“Relearn astonishment.”
― Elias Canetti

“I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life - and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.”
― Georgia O'Keeffe

“I do not like the idea of happyness — it is too momentary — I would say that I was always busy and interested in something — interest has more meaning to me than the idea of happyness.”
― Georgia O'Keeffe

“E eu pergunto aos economistas políticos, aos moralistas, se já calcularam o número de indivíduos que é forçoso condenar à miséria, ao trabalho desproporcionado, à desmoralização, à infâmia, à ignorância crapulosa, à desgraça invencível, à penúria absoluta, para produzir um rico?”
― Almeida Garrett

“Na hora em que ela acreditou na minha morte, nessa hora morri”
― Almeida Garrett, Frei Luís de Sousa

“E dizem que saudades que matam! Saudades dão vida; são a salvação de muita coisa que, em seu pleno gozo e posse pacífica, pereceria de inanição ou morreria da opressora moléstia da saciedade.”
― Almeida Garrett, Viagens na Minha Terra

“Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.”
― Evelyn Waugh

“Old boy," said Grimes, "you're in love."
"Nonsense!"
"Smitten?" said Grimes.
"No, no."
"The tender passion?"
"No."
"Cupid's jolly little darts?"
"No."
"Spring fancies, love's young dream?"
"Nonsense!"
"Not even a quickening of the pulse?"
"No."
"A sweet despair?"
"Certainly not."
"A trembling hope?"
"No."
"A frisson? a Je ne sais quoi?"
"Nothing of the sort."
"Liar!" said Grimes.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Decline and Fall

“Well, it's either kiss me or kill me, that's how I see it.”
― Tom Waits

“Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, selfishness, evil -- or else an absolute ignorance.”
― Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter

“Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's beautiful.”
― Milan Kundera

“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.”
― Mark Twain

“All men of action are dreamers.”
― James Huneker

“Recognition of the political-economic forces that impose patterns of suffering is the foundation for an applied critique of policy and services that persecute oppositional, marginalized populations in the name of morality”
― Philippe Bourgois, Righteous Dopefiend