Chiheb Tlili > Chiheb's Quotes

“Let everything that's been planned come true. Let them believe. And let them have a laugh at their passions. Because what they call passion actually is not some emotional energy, but just the friction between their souls and the outside world. And most important, let them believe in themselves. Let them be helpless like children, because weakness is a great thing, and strength is nothing. When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible. When he dies, he is hard and insensitive. When a tree is growing, it's tender and pliant. But when it's dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death's companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being. Because what has hardened will never win.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky

“Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence– whether much that is glorious– whether all that is profound– does not spring from disease of thought– from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

“Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind
about nothing -- to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.”
― John Keats

“A high degree of intellect tends to make a man unsocial.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims

“Living in a constant chase after gain compels people to expend their spirit to the point of exhaustion in continual pretense and overreaching and anticipating other. Virtue has come to consist of doing something in less time that someone else. Hours in which honesty is permitted have become rare, and when they arrive one is tired and does not only want to "let oneself go" but actually wishes to stretch out as long and wide and ungainly as one happens to be... Soon we may well reach the point where people can no longer give in to the desire for a vita contemplativa (that is, taking a walk with ideas and friends) without self-contempt and a bad conscience.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“A thought, even a possibility, can shatter and transform us.”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

“It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Is it better to out-monster the monster or to be quietly devoured?”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

“I am alone in the midst of these happy, reasonable voices. All these creatures spend their time explaining, realizing happily that they agree with each other. In Heaven's name, why is it so important to think the same things all together. ”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.”
― Karl Marx

“Those who do not weep, do not see.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Not seeing people permits us to imagine them with every perfection.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“There are no weeds, and no worthless men. There are only bad farmers.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Fashions have done more harm than revolutions.”
― Victor Hugo

“The quantity of civilization is measured by the quality of imagination.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“What matters deafness of the ear, when the mind hears? The one true deafness, the incurable deafness, is that of the mind.”
― Victor Hugo

“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Compassion is the basis of morality.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

“One should use common words to say uncommon things”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
― Oscar Wilde

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
― Albert Camus

“In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion."

[The Minotaur]”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“In life, finding a voice is speaking and living the truth. Each of you is an original. Each of you has a distinctive voice. When you find it, your story will be told. You will be heard.”
― John Grisham

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Je croyais voir des choses invisibles aux yeux des autres, j'étais encore plus aveugle qu'eux.”
― Marc Levy, Le Voleur d'ombres