Anna Vincent > Anna's Quotes

“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”
― Albert Camus

“people can die of mere imagination”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

“Some women marry houses.”
― Anne Sexton

“He looked like some plant bleached by darkness.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Sometimes I long to forget… It is painful to be conscious of two worlds.”
― Eva Hoffman, Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language

“They [his readers, whom he asks to be his friends] will find that I have always loved truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a way of first introducing it into minds which were ignorant of its charms” (Casanova, p.34, Vol 1 Preface).”
― Casanova, The Complete Memoirs of Casanova (Unexpurgated Edition)

“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Happy?" asked Aquilina, with dreadful look, and a smile full of pity and terror. "Ah, you do not know what it is to be condemned to a life of pleasure.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin

“Journalism, look you, is the religion of modern society.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Wild Ass's Skin

“Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living. You said I killed you--haunt me then. The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe--I know that ghosts have wandered the earth. Be with me always--take any form--drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“And if the worst, or best, happens, and Death comes for you in the snow, he comes disguised as Sleep, and you greet him rather as a welcome friend than a gruesome foe.”
― Aspley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World

“To say "I love you" one must know first how to say the "I".”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“This pursuit of unavailable distant people has oedipal roots.
… fearing the consequences, they make certain that they fail at the attempt.”
―Distancing, Kantor (p.115)”
― Kantor

“Maria was married on Saturday. In all important preparations of mind she was complete, being prepared for matrimony by a hatred of home, by the misery of disappointed affection, and contempt of the man she was to marry. The bride was elegantly dressed and the two bridesmaids were duly inferior. Her mother stood with salts, expecting to be agitated, and her aunt tried to cry. Marriage is indeed a maneuvering business.”
― Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

“May she wake in torment!" he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. "Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—May she wake in torment!" he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. "Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“Honest people don't hide their deeds.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“Treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends; they wound those who resort to them worse than their enemies.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“В тридцать лет питерец должен познать развод, переезд и избавление от зависимости. Зависимость может быть совсем пустяковая, но как приятно обмолвиться: "В те времена я ещё не преодолел кетчупную зависимость и добавлял кетчуп в кофе, виски и гель для душа. Но теперь, как видите, я себя контролирую. Иногда я даже вовсе могу не вспомнить о кетчупе во время еды. Особенно, если обедаю в гостях у бабушки".”
― Ольга Лукас, Новый поребрик из бордюрного камня

“Aristotle may be regarded as the cultural barometer of Western history. Whenever his influence dominated the scene, it paved the way for one of history's brilliant eras; whenever it fell, so did mankind.”
― Ayn Rand

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“When my turn on the program comes, I am not nervous at all—because all this is happening out of time, out of space. I am, for a moment, a figure of my own fantasy, and I play my appointed role as if I were in the movies.”
― Eva Hoffman, Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language

“Love is a myth.'
'Love is a myth,' Grandfather Trout said. 'Like summer.'
'What?'
'In winter,'Grandfather Trout said, 'summer is a myth. A report, a rumor. Not to be believed in. Get it? Love is a myth. So is summer.”
― John Crowley, Little, Big