Lena Savic > Lena's Quotes

“Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.”
― Hermann Hesse

“People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.”
― Hermann Hesse

“Don't let sleep overtake you; the world's awake within you.”
― Vasko Popa, The Little Box

“The world in which you were born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you; they are unique manifestations of the human spirit.”
― Wade Davis

“In quoting others, we cite ourselves.”
― Julio Cortázar, Around the Day in Eighty Worlds

“good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws”
― Plato

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
― J. Krishnamurti

“If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original.”
― Ken Robinson, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

“Love asks us to enjoy our life
For nothing good can come of death.
Who is alive? I ask.
Those who are born of love.

Seek us in love itself,
Seek love in us ourselves.
Sometimes I venerate love,
Sometimes it venerates me.”
― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi, Love: The Joy That Wounds: The Love Poems of Rumi

“I will soothe you and heal you,
I will bring you roses.
I too have been covered with thorns.”
― Rumi

“Even
After
All this time
The Sun never says to the Earth,

"You owe me."

Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the whole sky.”
― Hafiz a

“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays

“Let’s not be too harsh where poets are concerned. They have to live in no-man’s-land, halfway between dreams and reality.”
― Arthur Gordon, A Touch of Wonder

“Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.”
― Czeslaw Milosz

“I would love to say
that you
make me
weak in the knees
but
to be quite upfront
and completely
truthful
you
make my body
forget
it has knees
at all.”
― Tyler Knott Gregson, Love Language

“Promise me you will not spend so much time treading water and trying to keep your head above the waves that you forget, truly forget, how much you have always loved to swim.”
― Tyler Knott Gregson

“Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'

'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.

'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'

'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'

'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”
― Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit

“The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.”
― Tom Waits

“Drawing teaches habits of close observation that will always be useful.”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“I am yours.
Don't give myself back to me.”
― Rumi

“i was dead
i came alive
i was tears
i became laughter
all because of love
when it arrived
my temporal life
from then on
changed to eternal

love said to me
you are not
crazy enough
you don’t
fit this house

i went and
became crazy
crazy enough
to be in chains
love said
you are not
intoxicated enough
you don’t
fit the group

i went and
got drunk
drunk enough
to overflow
with light-headedness
love said
you are still
too clever
filled with
imagination and skepticism

i went and
became gullible
and in fright
pulled away
from it all
love said
you are a candle
attracting everyone
gathering every one
around you

i am no more
a candle spreading light
i gather no more crowds
and like smoke
i am all scattered now

love said
you are a teacher
you are a head
and for everyone
you are a leader
i am no more
not a teacher
not a leader
just a servant
to your wishes

love said
you already have
your own wings
i will not give you
more feathers
and then my heart
pulled itself apart
and filled to the brim
with a new light
overflowed with fresh life

now even the heavens
are thankful that
because of love
i have become
the giver of light”
― Rumi

“If you have reasons to love someone, you don’t love them.”
― Slavoj Žižek

“As we expand our knowledge of good books, we shrink the circle of men whose company we appreciate.”
― Ludwig Feuerbach

“Christianity set itself the goal of fulfilling man’s unattainable desires, but for that very reason ignored his attainable desires. By promising man eternal life, it deprived him of temporal life, by teaching him to trust in God’s help it took away his trust in his own powers; by giving him faith in a better life in heaven, it destroyed his faith in a better life on earth and his striving to attain such a life. Christianity gave man what his imagination desires, but for that very reason failed to give him what he really and truly desires.”
― Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion

“You need Power,
only when you want
to do something harmful
otherwise
Love is enough to get everything done.”
― Charlie Chaplin

“You are always in the right place at exactly the right time, and you always have been.”
― Ethan Hawke, Rules for a Knight

“Success isn't measured by what you achieve, it's measured by the obstacles you overcome.”
― Ethan Hawke, Ash Wednesday

“If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there's salvation in life. Even if you can't get together with that person.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Yes We Can!”
― Barack Obama

“...But the Mahommedan religion increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance. It was originally propagated by the sword, and ever since, its votaries have been subject, above the people of all other creeds, to this form of madness. In a moment the fruits of patient toil, the prospects of material prosperity, the fear of death itself, are flung aside. The more emotional Pathans are powerless to resist. All rational considerations are forgotten. Seizing their weapons, they become Ghazis—as dangerous and as sensible as mad dogs: fit only to be treated as such. While the more generous spirits among the tribesmen become convulsed in an ecstasy of religious bloodthirstiness, poorer and more material souls derive additional impulses from the influence of others, the hopes of plunder and the joy of fighting. Thus whole nations are roused to arms. Thus the Turks repel their enemies, the Arabs of the Soudan break the British squares, and the rising on the Indian frontier spreads far and wide. In each case civilisation is confronted with militant Mahommedanism. The forces of progress clash with those of reaction. The religion of blood and war is face to face with that of peace.”
― Winston Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force