Sulaiman > Sulaiman's Quotes

“Being alone has a power over me that never fails. My interior dissolves (for the time being only superficially) and is ready to release what lies deeper. When I am willfully alone, a slight ordering of my interior begins to take place and I need nothing more.”
― Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

“I lack nothing. I only needed myself.”
― Franz Kafka

“People left him alone. And that was all he wanted.”
― Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

“You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“What I write is different from what I say, what I say is different from what I think, what I think is different from what I ought to think and so it goes further into the deepest darkness.”
― Franz Kafka

“You once said that you would like to sit beside me while I write. Listen, in that case I could not write at all. For writing means revealing oneself to excess; that utmost of self-revelation and surrender, in which a human being, when involved with others, would feel he was losing himself, and from which, therefore, he will always shrink as long as he is in his right mind-- for everyone wants to live as long as he is alive-- even the degree of self-revelation and surrender is not enough for writing.
Writing that springs from the surface of existence-- when there is no other way and deeper wells have dried up-- is nothing, and collapses the moment a truer emotion makes the surface shake. That is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, why there can never be enough silence around one when one writes, why even night is not night enough.”
― Franz Kafka

“Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are.”
― José Saramago, Blindness

“Spend your free time the way you like, not the way you think you're supposed to.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“I’m doing badly, I’m doing well; whichever you prefer.”
― Franz Kafka

“No one is afraid of heights, they're afraid of falling down. No one is afraid of saying I love you, they're afraid of the answer...”
― Kurt Cobain

“For myself I am too heavy, and for you too light.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“It is only because of their stupidity that they are able to be so sure of themselves.”
― Franz Kafka

“Conversations bore me, to visit people bores me, the sorrows and joys of my relatives bore me to my soul.”
― Franz Kafka

“And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.”
― William Blake

“Little Fly
Thy summers play,
My thoughtless hand
Has brush'd away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance
And drink & sing:
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
And strength & breath:
And the want
Of thought is death;

Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die”
― William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience

“And I leave my post of observation and find I have had enough of this outside life; I feel that there is nothing more that I can learn here, either now or at any time. And I long to say a last goodbye to everything up here, to go down into my burrow never to return again, let things take their course, and not try to retard them with my profitless vigils.”
― Franz Kafka, The Basic Kafka

“There sat I, a faded being, under faded leaves.”
― Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

“The crow wished everything was black, the Owl, that everything was white.”
― William Blake

“Everything you say is boring and incomprehensible, but that alone doesn't make it true.”
― Franz Kafka

“Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.”
― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“Do what you will, this life's a fiction, And it is made up of contradiction.”
― William Blake

“If this is what you came for, then I didn't send for you.
Kafka (note to himself in journal)”
― Kafka, Franz

“By your side I’m most quiet and most unquiet, most inhibited and most free.”
― Franz Kafka

“The beauty of things must be that they end.”
― Jack Kerouac, Tristessa

“Some are born to sweet delight, Some are born to endless night.”
― William Blake

“For I dance
And drink and sing,
Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
And strength and breath
And the want
Of thought is death

Then am I
A happy fly
If I live
Or if I die”
― William Blake

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my eyes and all is born again.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“Death is not an evil, because it frees us from all evils, and while it takes away good things, it takes away also the desire for them. Old age is the supreme evil, because it deprives us of all pleasures, leaving us only the appetite for them, and it brings with it all sufferings. Nevertheless, we fear death, and we desire old age.”
― Giacomo Leopardi

“La plus belle des ruses du diable est de vous persuader qu'il n'existe pas."

("The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.")”
― Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen