Viktor > Viktor's Quotes

“When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Boscombe Valley Mystery - a Sherlock Holmes Short Story

“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“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

“A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact.”
― Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

“All serious poker players try to minimize their tells, obviously. There are a couple ways to go about this. One is the robotic approch: where your face becomes a mask and your voice a monotone, at least while the hand is being played. . . . The other is the manic method, where you affect a whole bunch of tics, twitches, and expressions, and mix them up with a river of insane babble. The idea is to overwhelm your opponents with clues, so they can't sort out what's going on. This approach can be effective, but for normal people it's hard to pull off. (If you've spent part of your life in an institution, this method may come naturally.)”
― Dan Harrington, Harrington on Hold 'em: Expert Strategy for No-Limit Tournaments, Volume I: Strategic Play

“I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Why do you think I'm reading this? But you know—though maybe you have different standards for what constitutes 'interesting' than I do—there's no such thing in this world as an uninteresting book. Any book is interesting; and not just when it's new. Even books you've already read can be quite fascinating. It just takes a little more effort to get there, that's all.”
― Natsuhiko Kyogoku, The Summer of the Ubume

“The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“Opportunities multiply as they are seized.”
― Sun Tzu

“In the face of pain there are no heroes.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.”
― George Orwell, 1984

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

“Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead

“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

“In all the universe nothing remains permanent and unchanged but the spirit.”
― Anton Chekhov, The Seagull

“Moral maxims are surprisingly useful on occasions when we can invent little else to justify our actions.”
― Alexander Pushkin, Tales of Belkin

“It is easy to crush an enemy outside oneself but impossible to defeat an enemy within.”
― Eiji Yoshikawa, Musashi: An Epic Novel of the Samurai Era

“...you're going to find people from all over the country, everyone hungry for money and position. You won't make a name for yourself just doing what the next man does. You'll have to distinguish yourself in some way.”
― Eiji Yoshikawa, Musashi

“We sit in the mud, my friend, and reach for the stars.”
― Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

“Enemies were teachers in disguise.”
― Eiji Yoshikawa, Musashi: An Epic Novel of the Samurai Era

“The greatest happiness of life was to stand at the difficult border between success and failure.”
― Eiji Yoshikawa, Taiko

“If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“Her only weapons were her tears.”
― Eiji Yoshikawa, Taiko

“He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“He was fond of books, for they are cool and sure friends”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Let us study things that are no more. It is necessary to understand them, if only to avoid them.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness. (Monseigneur Bienvenu in _Les Miserables_)”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Nobody loves the light like the blind man.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables