Ben > Ben's Quotes

“Under the thinning fog the surf curled and creamed, almost without sound, like a thought trying to form inself on the edge of consciousness.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

“A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“Compassion was the most important, perhaps the sole law of human existence.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“We must never forget that human motives are generally far more complicated than we are apt to suppose, and that we can very rarely accurately describe the motives of another.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“It’s so hard for women—even nice women—to realize that their bodies are not irresistible.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

“Very well, then there's an experiment, and the thing is proved; one cannot live and count each moment; say what you like, but one cannot.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

“You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that, oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
― Steve Jobs

“Beauty will save the world.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“ليست الحياة بسطوحها بل بخفاياها .. ولا المرئيات بقشورها بل بلبابها .. ولا الدين بما تظهره المعابد وتبنيه الطقوس والتقاليد بل بما يختبىء في النفوس ويتجوهر بالنيات ولا الناس بوجوههم بل بقلوبهم”
― جبران خليل جبران, البدائع والطرائف

“ليتني كنت بئراً جافاً والناس ترمي بي الحجارة فذلك اهون من ان اكون ينبوع ماء حي والظامئون يجتازونني ولا يستقون”
― جبران خليل جبران, البدائع والطرائف

“يا أخي لا تستدل على حقيقة امرىء بما بان منه .. ولا تتخذ قول امرىء او عملا من اعماله عنوانا لطويته .. فرب من تستهجله لثقل في لسانه وركاكة في لهجته كان وجدانه منهاجاً للفطن وقلبه مهبطاً للوحي و رب من تحترقه لدمامة في وجهه وخساسة في عيشه كان في الارض هبة من هبات السماء وفي الناس نفحة من نفحات الله”
― جبران خليل جبران, البدائع والطرائف

“ان ما نراه بأعيننا ليس بأكثر من غمامة تحجب عنا ما يجب ان نشاهده ببصائرنا”
― جبران خليل جبران, البدائع والطرائف

“عين الإنسان مجهر تبين له الدنيا أكبر مما هي عليه حقيقة”
― جبران خليل جبران, البدائع والطرائف

“The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room. It's like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction--every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it's really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and excitement at about a million miles an hour.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

“بين منطوق لم يُقصَد، ومقصود لم يُنطَق، تضيع الكثير من المحبة.”
― جبران خليل جبران

“How can I lose faith in the justice of life, when the dreams of those who sleep upon feathers are not more beautiful than the dreams of those who sleep upon the earth?”
― Khalil Gibran

“Ah, happiness courts the light so we deem the world is gay. But misery hides aloof so we deem that misery there is none.”
― Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener

“Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.”
― Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener

“Laboring through a world every day more stultified, which expected salvation in codes and governments, ever more willing to settle for suburban narratives and diminished payoffs--what were the chances of finding anyone else seeking to transcend that, and not even particularly aware of it?”
― Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day

“But love truly becomes love only when, no longer an embryo developing painfully in the darkness of the body, it ventures to confess itself with lips and breath. However hard it tries to remain a chrysalis, a time comes when the intricate tissue of the cocoon tears, and out it falls, dropping from the heights to the farthest depths, falling with redoubled force into the startled heart.”
― Stefan Zweig, Journey into the Past

“What a torment it is to see so much loveliness passing and repassing before us, and yet not dare to lay hold of it!”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

“The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

“Knock, And He'll open the door
Vanish, And He'll make you shine like the sun
Fall, And He'll raise you to the heavens
Become nothing, And He'll turn you into everything.”
― Jalal Ad-Din Rumi