Elena > Elena's Quotes

“As we all know, time sometimes flies like a bird, and sometimes
crawls like a worm, but people may be unusually happy when they do not
even notice whether time has passed quickly or slowly”
― Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

“We have the marvelous gift of making everything insignificant.”
― Nikolai Gogol

“Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“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

“But what if I make a mistake?' Will asked.

Gilan threw back his head and laughed. 'A mistake? One mistake? You should be so lucky. You'll make dozens! I made four or five on my first day alone! Of course you'll make mistakes. Just don't make any of them twice. If you do mess things up, don't try to hide it. Don't try to rationalize it. Recognize it and admit it and learn from it. We never stop learning, none of us.”
― John Flanagan, Erak's Ransom

“So long as one's just dreaming about what to do, one can soar like an eagle and move mountains, it seems, but as soon as one starts doing it one gets worn out and tired.”
― Ivan Turgenev

“a person who gets angry at his own illness is sure to overcome it”
― Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

“Moreover, probably owing to excessive self-consciousness, perhaps as the result of the generally unfortunate cast of my personality, there existed between my thoughts and feelings, and the expression of those feelings and thoughts, a sort of inexplicable, irrational, and utterly insuperable barrier; and whenever I made up my mind to overcome this obstacle by force, to break down this barrier, my gestures, the expression of my face, my whole being, took on an appearance of painful constraint. I not only seemed, I positively became unnatural and affected. I was conscious of this myself, and hastened to shrink back into myself. Then a terrible commotion was set up within me. I analysed myself to the last thread, compared myself with others, recalled the slightest glances, smiles, words of the people to whom I had tried to open myself out, put the worst construction on everything, laughed vindictively at my own pretensions to 'be like every one else,'—and suddenly, in the midst of my laughter, collapsed utterly into gloom, sank into absurd dejection, and then began again as before—went round and round, in fact, like a squirrel on its wheel. Whole days were spent in this harassing, fruitless exercise.”
― Ivan Turgenev, Diary of a Superfluous Man

“The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.”
― Nikolai V. Gogol

“Man is such a wondrous being that it is never possible to count up all his merits at once. The more you study him, the more new particulars appear, and their description would be endless.”
― Nikolai Gogol, The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol

“What is stronger in us — passion or habit? Or are all the violent impulses, all the whirl of our desires and turbulent passions, only the consequence of our ardent age, and is it only through youth that they seem deep and shattering?”
― Nikolai Gogol

“Where there's life, death is inevitable. Dying's easy; it's living that's hard. The harder it gets, the stronger the will to live. And the greater the fear of death, the greater the struggle to keep on living.”
― Mo Yan, Big Breasts & Wide Hips

“Dear brother," Number Two replied, "I can eat shit, I just don't like the taste.”
― Mo Yan, The Garlic Ballads

“In fact no one recognizes the happiest moment of their lives as they are living it. It may well be that, in a moment of joy, one might sincerely believe that they are living that golden instant "now," even having lived such a moment before, but whatever they say, in one part of their hearts they still believe in the certainty of a happier moment to come. Because how could anyone, and particularly anyone who is still young, carry on with the belief that everything could only get worse: If a person is happy enough to think he has reached the happiest moment of his life, he will be hopeful enough to believe his future will be just as beautiful, more so.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“When we lose people we love, we should never disturb their souls, whether living or dead. Instead, we should find consolation in an object that reminds you of them, something...I don't know...even an earring”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“Hell isn't other people. Hell is yourself.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I like men who have a future and women who have a past.”
― Oscar Wilde

“No good deed goes unpunished.”
― Oscar Wilde

“I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The most terrible thing about it is not that it breaks one’s heart—hearts are made to be broken—but that it turns one’s heart to stone.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“Do you think that I would not have let you know that, if you suffered, I was suffering too: that if you wept there were tears in my eyes also: and that if you lay in the house of bondage and were despised of men, I out of my griefs had built a house in which to dwell until your coming, a treasury in which all that man had denied to you would be laid up for your healing, one hundredfold in increase?”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”
― Sigmund Freud

“Life, as we find it, is too hard for us; it brings us too many pains, disappointments and impossible tasks. In order to bear it we cannot dispense with palliative measures... There are perhaps three such measures: powerful deflections, which cause us to make light of our misery; substitutive satisfactions, which diminish it; and intoxicating substances, which make us insensible to it.”
― Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

“Words have a magical power. They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair; they can transfer knowledge from teacher to student; words enable the orator to sway his audience and dictate its decisions. Words are capable of arousing the strongest emotions and prompting all men's actions.”
― Sigmund Freud

“Human beings are funny. They long to be with the person they love but refuse to admit openly. Some are afraid to show even the slightest sign of affection because of fear. Fear that their feelings may not be recognized, or even worst, returned. But one thing about human beings puzzles me the most is their conscious effort to be connected with the object of their affection even if it kills them slowly within.”
― Sigmund Freud

“Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine.”
― Sigmund Freud

“There are no mistakes”
― Sigmund Freud