Venelin > Venelin's Quotes

“It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.”
― John Updike, My Father's Tears and Other Stories

“If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price.”
― John Updike, Rabbit, Run

“I want to write books that unlock the traffic jam in everybody's head.”
― John Updike, Hugging the Shore: Essays and Criticism

“How can you respect the world when you see it's being run by a bunch of kids turned old?”
― John Updike, Rabbit Is Rich

“Writers may be disreputable, incorrigible, early to decay or late to bloom but they dare to go it alone”
― John Updike

“If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“Genius is eternal patience. ”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“I am still learning.”
― Michelangelo Buonarroti

“Wiggin really doesn't care as much about himself as he does about these other kids who aren't worth five minutes of his time.
And yet this may be the very trait that makes everyone focus on him. Maybe this is why all those stories Sister Carlotta told him, Jesus always had a crowd around him.Maybe this is why I'm so afraid of Wiggen. Because he's the alien, not me. He's the unintelligible one, the unpredictable one. He's the one who doesn't do things for sensible, predictable reasons. I'm going to survive, and once you know that, there's nothing more to know about me. Him, though, he could do anything.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“So I want to ask you a hypothetical question.

My favorite kind. Next to rhetorical ones. I can nap equally well through either kind.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.”
― Marie Curie

“I think you don't grow up until you stop worrying about other people's purposes or lack of them and find the purposes you believe in for yourself.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“I manage because I have to. Because I've no other way out. Because I've overcome the vanity and pride of being different, I've understood that they are a pitiful defense against being different. Because I've understood that the sun shines differently when something changes. The sun shines differently, but it will continue to shine, and jumping at it with a hoe isn't going to do anything.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, The Last Wish

“No. I’ve no time to waste. Winter’s coming.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, The Last Wish

“What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.”
― Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History

“I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.”
― Thomas Carlyle

“Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.”
― Thomas Carlyle

“A man lives by believing something; not by debating and arguing about many things.”
― Thomas Carlyle

“The greatest of faults is to be conscious of none.”
― Thomas Carlyle

“Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of man you are”
― Thomas Carlyle

“The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self activity.”
― Thomas Carlyle

“Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world. ”
― Thomas Carlyle

“Every man is my superior in that I may learn from him.”
― Thomas Carlyle

“The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.”
― Thomas Carlyle

“Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, and its power of endurance - the cheerful man will do more in the same time, will do it better, will preserve it longer, than the sad or sullen.”
― Thomas Carlyle

“Have a purpose in life, and having it, throw into your work such strength of mind and muscle as God has given you.”
― Thomas Carlyle

“In a controversy, the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.”
― Thomas Carlyle

“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“I've found that one must try and teach people that there's no top limit to disaster-that, so long as breath remains in your body, you've got accept the miseries of life. They will often seem infinite, insupportable. They are part of the human condition.”
― Ian Fleming, You Only Live Twice

“MEMORY'S SO TREACHEROUS. ONE MOMENT YOU'RE LOST IN A CARNIVAL OF DELIGHTS, WITH POIGNANT CHILDHOOD AROMAS , THE FLASHING NEON OF PUBERTY, ALL THAT SENTIMENTAL CANDY-FLOSS ...

THE NEXT , IT LEADS YOU SOMEWHERE YOU DON'T WANT TO GO...

...SOMEWHERE DARK AND COLD, FILLED WITH THE DAMP, AMBIGUOUS SHAPES OF THINKS YOU'D HOPED WERE FORGOTTEN.

MEMORIES CAN BE VILE, REPULSIVE LITTLE BRUTES. LIKE CHILDREN, I SUPPOSE. HAHA.

BUT CAN WE LIVE WITHOUT THEM? MEMORIES ARE WHAT OUR REASON IS BASED UPON. IF WE CAN'T FACE THEM, WE DENY REASON ITSELF!

ALGHOUGH, WHY NOT? WE AREN'T CONTRACTUALLY TIED DOWN TO RATIONALITY!

THERE IS NO SANITY CLAUSE!

SO WHEN YOU FIND YOURSELF LOCKED ONTO AN UNPLEASANT TRAIN OF THOUGHT, HEADING FOR THE PLACES IN YOUR PAST WHERE THE SCREAMING IS UNBEARABLE, REMEMBER THERE'S ALWAYS MADNESS.

MADNESS IS THE EMERGENCY EXIT...

YOU CAN JUST STEP OUTSIDE, AND CLOSE THE DOOR ON ALL THOSE DREADFUL THINGS THAT HAPPENED. YOU CAN LOCK THEM AWAY...

FOREVER.”
― Alan Moore, Batman: The Killing Joke