Iria > Iria's Quotes

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  • #1
    E.M. Forster
    “What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.”
    E. M. Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy

  • #2
    E.M. Forster
    “I am a Jane Austenite, and therefore slightly imbecile about Jane Austen. My fatuous expression, and airs of personal immunity—how ill they sit on the face, say, of a Stevensonian! But Jane Austen is so different. She is my favourite author! I read and reread, the mouth open and the mind closed. Shut up in measureless content, I greet her by the name of most kind hostess, while criticism slumbers.”
    E. M. Forster

  • #3
    E.M. Forster
    “Books have to be read (worse luck it takes so long a time). It is the only way of discovering what they contain. A few savage tribes eat them, but reading is the only method of assimilation revealed to the West.”
    E.M. Forster

  • #4
    W. Somerset Maugham
    “The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.”
    W. Somerset Maugham

  • #5
    W. Somerset Maugham
    “To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.”
    W. Somerset Maugham, Books and You

  • #6
    W. Somerset Maugham
    “She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.”
    W. Somerset Maugham

  • #7
    Jane Austen
    “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
    Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

  • #8
    Oscar Wilde
    “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
    Oscar Wilde

  • #9
    George Eliot
    “It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
    George Eliot

  • #10
    W. Somerset Maugham
    “To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day.”
    W. Somerset Maugham

  • #11
    W. Somerset Maugham
    “We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.”
    W. Somerset Maugham

  • #12
    Irène Némirovsky
    “Heureux sont ceux qui peuvent aimer et haïr sans feinte, sans détour, sans nuance.”
    Irène Némirovsky, Suite Française

  • #13
    William Faulkner
    “Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it.
    Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.”
    William Faulkner

  • #14
    Charlotte Brontë
    “Jane, be still; don't struggle so like a wild, frantic bird, that is rending its own plumage in its desperation."
    "I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you.”
    Charlotte Brontë , Jane Eyre

  • #15
    Charlotte Brontë
    “I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.”
    Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

  • #16
    Sylvia Plath
    “I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
    Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

  • #17
    John Keats
    “I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days - three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.”
    John Keats, Bright Star: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne

  • #18
    John Keats
    “Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.”
    John Keats

  • #19
    Sándor Márai
    “Que significa 'amar'? Durante anios he pensado que significa conocer a la otra persona..., conocerla perfectamente, con todos sus secretos; conocer cada rincon de su cuerpo, cada reflejo; conocer a fondo su alma, cada una de sus emociones... Quizas sea eso, quizas conocer sea lo mismo que amar. Pero eso solo es una teoria. Despues de todo, que quiere decir conocer? Cuanto se puede conocer a un ser humano? Hasta donde se puede seguir a un alma desconocida? Hasta sus suenios? Y luego adonde? No se puede acompaniar a nadie a su inconsciente. Ni siquiera es necesario esperar a que ella cierre los ojos, se despida de mi y se retire a ese otro mundo, al mundo que llamamos de la noche... Porque existen dos mundos y uno esta mas alla del espacio conocido en el que vivimos, y quizas en ese otro mundo vivamos de manera mas real que en el espacio y en el tiempo...Ahora ya se con certeza que hay otro lugar que es solo nuestro, la propiedad privada de cada uno. (...) Aunque todavia sigo sin saber lo que significa amar... Acaso se puede saber? Y de que sirve saberlo? No tiene nada que ver con la razon. Seguramente el amor es algo mas que el conocimiento. Conocer a alguien no es mucho, tiene unos limites... Amar debe ser algo parecido a seguir el mismo ritmo, una casualidad tan maravillosa como si en el universo hubiese dos meteoros con la misma trayectoria, la misma orbita y la misma materia. Una casualidad tal que no se puede ni calcular ni prever. Tal vez ni exista siquiera (...) Dos personas a las que les gustan las mismas comidas y la misma musica, que caminan al mismo ritmo por la calley que se buscan al mismo ritmo en la cama: quizas sea eso el amor. Que cosa mas rara debe de ser! Como un milagro... Yo imagino que los encuentros de ese tipo deben de ser misticos. La vida real no se basa en tales probabilidades. Creo que las personas que siguen el mismo ritmo, que segregan sus hormonas al mismo tiempo, que piensan lo mismo de las cosas y lo expresan con palabras identicas... bueno, creo que eso no existe. Una de las dos sera mas lenta y la otra mas rapida, una es timida, la otra osada, una ardiente, la otra tibia. Asi es como hay que tomar la vida, los encuentros... Hay que aceptar la felicidad asi, en su estado imperfecto.”
    Sandor Maraï, Divorce à Buda

  • #20
    Sándor Márai
    “Uno siempre responde con su vida entera a las preguntas mas importantes. No importa lo que diga, no importa con que palabras y con que argumentos trate de defenderse. Al final, al final de todo, uno responde a todas las preguntas con los hechos de su vida: a las preguntas que el mundo le ha hecho una y otra vez. Las preguntas son estas: Quien eres? Que has querido de verdad? Que has sabido de verdad? A que has sido fiel o infiel? Con que y con quien te has comportado con valentia o con cobardia? Estas con las preguntas. Uno responde como puede, diciendo la verdad o mintiendo: eso no importa. Lo que si importa es que uno al final responde con su vida entera.”
    Sandor Marai

  • #21
    Kazuo Ishiguro
    “I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it's just too much. The current's too strong. They've got to let go, drift apart. That's how it is with us. It's a shame, Kath, because we've loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can't stay together forever.”
    Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

  • #22
    Jack Kerouac
    “One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
    Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

  • #23
    C.J. Hauser
    “The average person, when encountering such a man, will think, Oh, boy, and keep a distance. They will not have figured this man out, per se, but the fact of the man seeming mysterious, seeming to have something up with him, is not a thing that is intriguing to them. They do not feel the need to find out what is up. They have a suspicion that, whatever is up, it will not bring them joy or peace to know about it. And for this reason, they go no further.”
    C.J. Hauser, The Crane Wife: A Memoir in Essays



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