ancientsorrow > ancientsorrow's Quotes

“Don't worry about who doesn't like you, who has more, or who's doing what.”
― Erma Bombeck

“With very few exceptions I have never remained in mutual favor very long with people I have known well. They very quickly find things wrong with me, or I with them. And I suppose nowadays I anticipate the disillusionment of others by keeping free of any illusions myself.”
― Thomas Cullinan, The Beguiled

“Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.”
― Hermann Hesse

“It's better to keep grief inside. Grief inside works like bees or ants, building curious and perfect structures, complicating you. Grief outside means you want something from someone, and chances are good you won't get it.”
― Hilary Thayer Hamann, Anthropology of an American Girl

“Nothing would bother me more than if they found me strange at the office. I like to revel in the irony that they don't find me at all strange. I like the hair shirt of being regarded by them as their equal. I like the crucifixion of being considered no different. THere are martyrdoms more subtle than those recorded for the saints and hermits. There are torments of our mental awareness as there are of the body and of desire. And in the former, as in the latter, there's a certain sensuality.....”
― Fernando Pessoa

“What happens to us either happens to everyone or only to us: in the first instance it's banal; in the second it's incomprehensible.”
― Fernando Pessoa

“It was a marvelous night, the sort of night one only experiences when one is young. The sky was so bright, and there were so many stars that, gazing upward, one couldn't help wondering how so many whimsical, wicked people could live under such a sky.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights and Other Stories

“In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Bramin, priest of Brahma and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness - a real thorough-going illness.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead

“I'd rather be a failure at something I enjoy than a success at something I hate. ”
― George Burns

“Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The House of the Dead

“Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.”
― Vladimir Lenin

“The sun is high and I’m surrounded by sand.
For as far as my eyes can see
I’m strapped into a rocking chair
With a blanket over my knees
I am a stranger to myself
And nobody knows I’m here
When I looked into my face
It wasn’t myself I’d seen
But who I’ve tried to be.
I’m thinking of things I’d hoped to forget.
I’m choking to death in a sun that never sets.
I clugged up my mind with perpetual grief
And turned all my friends into enemies
And now that past has returned to haunt me.

I’M SCARED OF GOD AND SCARED OF HELL
AND I’M CAVING IN UPON MYSELF
HOW CAN ANYONE KNOW ME
WHEN I DON’T EVEN KNOW MYSELF”
― José Ángel Mañas

“There is, indeed, nothing more annoying than to be, for instance, wealthy, of good family, nice-looking, fairly intelligent, and even good-natured, and yet to have no talents, no special faculty, no peculiarity even, not one idea of one's own, to be precisely "like other people.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“May you be for ever blessed for that moment of bliss and happiness which you gave to another lonely and grateful heart. Isn't such a moment sufficient for the whole of one's life?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

“...there is no explaining anything by reasoning and so it is useless to reason.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead

“Grief and sadness knits two hearts in closer bonds that happiness ever can; and common sufferings are far stronger than common joys.”
― Alphonse de Lamartine

“The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the miraculous also.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“It's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party.”
― Nick Hornby

“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

“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“So I made up my mind I was going to find someone who would love me unconditionally three hundred and sixty-five days a year.

Watanabe: Wow, and did your search pay off?

M: That's the hard part. I guess I've been waiting so long I'm looking for perfection. That makes it tough.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“To love someone means to see them as God intended them.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.”
― Alfred, Lord Tennyson

“Besides, nowadays, almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and are miserable because of it.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.”
― Robert Frost

“Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.”
― Robert Frost

“When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich