Alitzel > Alitzel's Quotes

“Why do men and women like to advertise themselves so much? Is it not but an instinct derived from the days of slavery?”
― Okakura Kakuzō

“We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attacks on the twin towers and the pentagon and the American struggle in Iraq. These events swung American public opinion in our favor”
― Benjamin Netanyahu

“India, the new myth--a collective fiction in which anything was possible, a fable rivalled only by the two other mighty fantasies: money and God.”
― Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children

“And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon.”
― Edward Lear, The Owl and the Pussycat

“Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane.”
― Howard Phillips Lovecraft

“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

“We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there.”
― Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon

“We don't have to be defined by the things we did or didn't do in our past. Some people allow themselves to be controlled by regret. Maybe it's a regret, maybe it's not. It's merely something that happened. Get over it.”
― Pittacus Lore, I Am Number Four

“The Seven Social Sins are:

Wealth without work.
Pleasure without conscience.
Knowledge without character.
Commerce without morality.
Science without humanity.
Worship without sacrifice.
Politics without principle.


From a sermon given by Frederick Lewis Donaldson in Westminster Abbey, London, on March 20, 1925.”
― Frederick Lewis Donaldson

“Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“The earth laughs in flowers.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Butterflies are self propelled flowers.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“In the end, the problem is not so much that people forget, but that they do not always forget the same thing. What still exists as a memory for one person can be irretrievably lost for another, and this creates difficulties, insuperable barriers against understanding.”
― Paul Auster, In the Country of Last Things

“I've been trying to fit everything in, trying to get to the end before it's too late, but I see now how badly I've deceived myself. Words do not allow such things. The closer you come to the end, the more there is to say. The end is only imaginary, a destination you invent to keep yourself going, but a point comes when you realize you will never get there. You might have to stop, but that is only because you have run out of time. You stop, but that does not mean you have come to an end.”
― Paul Auster, In the Country of Last Things

“Nothing lasts, you see, not even the thoughts inside you. And you musn't
waste your time looking for them. Once a thing is gone, that is the end of it.”
― Paul Auster, In the Country of Last Things

“But suddenly, after all this time, I feel there is something to say, and if I don't
quickly write it down, my head will burst. It doesn't matter if you read it. It
doesn't even matter if I send it - assuming that could be done. Perhaps it comes
down to this. I am writing to you because you know nothing. Because you are far
away from me and know nothing.”
― Paul Auster, In the Country of Last Things

“D’you know what happens when you hurt people?’ Ammu said. ‘When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Oh lovers! be careful in those dangerous first days! once you've brought breakfast in bed you'll have to bring it forever, unless you want to be accused of lovelessness and betrayal.”
― Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

“(Hungarian...) the only tongue the devil respects.”
― Chico Buarque, Budapeste

“Betrayal. Translation means doing violence upon the original, means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. So then where does that leave us? How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“He went back to his first morning in Oxford: climbing a sunny hill with Ramy, picnic basket in hand. Elderflower cordial. Warm brioche, sharp cheese, a chocolate tart for dessert. The air that day smelled like a promise, all of Oxford shone like an illumination, and he was falling in love.

'It's so odd,' Robin said. Back then they'd already passed the point of honesty; they spoke to one another unfiltered, unafraid of the consequences. 'It's like I've known you forever.'

'Me too,' Ramy said.

'And that makes no sense,' said Robin, drunk already, though there was no alcohol in the cordial. 'Because I've known you for less than a day, and yet...'

'I think,' said Ramy, 'its' because when I speak, you listen.'

'Because you are fascinating.'

'Because you're a good translator.' Ramy leaned back on his elbows. 'That's just what translation is, I think. That's all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your biases to glimpse what they're trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Hygge is a state of being you experience if you are at peace with yourself, your spouse, the tax authorities and your inner organs.”
― Tove Ditlevsen

“Who has not asked himself at some time or other: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?”
― Clarice Lispector, A Hora da Estrela

“I am only true when I’m alone.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star

“All the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born. But before prehistory there was the prehistory of the prehistory and there was the never and there was the yes. It was ever so. I don’t know why, but I do know that the universe never began.
Make no mistake, I only achieve simplicity with enormous effort.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star

“For one has the right to shout.
So, I am shouting.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star

“Meanwhile, the clouds are white and the sky is blue. Why is there so much God? At the expense of men.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star

“As soon as you discover the truth it's already gone: the moment passed. I ask: what is it? Reply: it's not.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star