Yu > Yu's Quotes

“What good would politics be, if it didn’t give everyone the opportunity to make moral compromises.”
― Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

“But why must choices always lie along a linear spectrum with two poles instead of say among a sphere of possibilities”
― David Mazzucchelli, Asterios Polyp

“There are so many different kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.”
― Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

“There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside of them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.”
― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

“For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.”
― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

“He probably was mediocre after all, though in a very honorable sense of that word.”
― Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

“There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said -- no. But somehow we missed it.”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“Rosencrantz: I don't believe in it anyway.
Guildenstern: What?
Rosencrantz: England.
Guildenstern: Just a conspiracy of cartographers, then? ”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“There are no innocents. There are, however, different degrees of responsibility.”
― Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Played with Fire

“Ignorance is the parent of fear.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“To live (as I understand it) is to exist within a conception of time.

But to remember is to vacate the very notion of time.

Every memory, no matter how remote its subject, takes place 'Now,' at the moment it's called to the mind.

The more something is recalled, the more the brain has a chance to refine the original experience.

Because every memory is a re-creation, not a playback.”
― David Mazzucchelli, Asterios Polyp

“What if reality (as perceived) were simply an extension of the self? Wouldn't that color the way each individual experiences the world?”
― David Mazzucchelli, Asterios Polyp

“There are just two things you need to fix here: the interior and the exterior.”
― David Mazzucchelli, Asterios Polyp

“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“Бывают эпохи, когда людям жить легко, но очень противно.”
― Лев Николаевич Гумилёв, Тысячелетие вокруг Каспия

“What you haven't done by thirty you're not likely to do. What you have done you'll do lots more.”
― John Updike, Rabbit Redux

“It comes to him: growth is betrayal. There is no other route. There is no arriving somewhere without leaving somewhere.”
― John Updike, Rabbit Redux

“Thirty-six years old and he knows less than when he started. With the difference that now he knows how little he'll always know.”
― John Updike, Rabbit Redux

“Man is a mechanism for turning things into spirit and turning spirit into things.”
― John Updike, Rabbit Redux

“Chaos is God's body. Order is the Devil's chains.”
― John Updike, Rabbit Redux

“There is this quality, in things, of the right way seeming wrong at first.”
― John Updike, Rabbit, Run

“I once did something right. I played first-rate basketball. I really did. And after you're first-rate at something, no matter what, it kind of takes the kick out of being second-rate.”
― John Updike, Rabbit, Run

“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”
― Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

“Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.”
― Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

“I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.”
― Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

“She was tired of everyone wanting to go to heaven, nobody wanting to die. The only thing worth grieving over, she said, was that sometimes there was more beauty in this life than the world could bear.”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

“The repeated lies become history, but they don't necessarily become the truth.”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

“I sit there thinking about how much courage it takes to live an ordinary life.”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

“The person we know at first, she thinks, is not the one we know at last.”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

“Goodness was more difficult than evil. Evil men knew that more than good men. That's why they became evil. That's why it stuck with them. Evil was for those who could never reach the truth. It was a mask for stupidity and lack of love. Even if people laughed at the notion of goodness, if they found it sentimental, or nostalgic, it didn't matter -- it was none of those things, he said, and it had to be fought for.”
― Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin