Ourania Topa > Ourania's Quotes

“«Η λογοτεχνία δεν είναι μόνο αυτή που είναι γραμμένη, είναι και η άλλη που μιλιέται από ανθρώπους που δεν θα γράψουν ποτέ βιβλία»”
― Γιάννης Μακριδάκης

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I would always rather be happy than dignified.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist.”
― Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959

“Loneliness sometimes gives me a quantity of creativeness - you're drinking another glass of wine and you're feeling even worse. Art doesn't work without pain; art also exists for compensating pain.”
― Till Lindemann

“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.
I am human, and think nothing human alien to me.”
― Terence

“Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don't think an artist can ever be happy.”
― Georges Simenon

“Impropriety is the soul of wit.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence

“you can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“Going to another country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what is was all about.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed with sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bullfighters.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch."
"Yes."
"It's sort of what we have instead of God.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“It was like certain dinners I remember from the war. There was much wine, an ignored tension, and a feeling of things coming that you could not prevent happening. Under the wine I lost the disgusted feeling and was happy. It seemed they were all such nice people.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“No; that doesn't interest me.'
'That's because you never read a book about it.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“Women made such swell friends. Awfully swell. In the first place, you had to be in love with a woman to have a basis of friendship. I had been having Brett for a friend. I had not been thinking about her side of it. I had been getting something for nothing. That only delayed the presentation of the bill. The bill always came. That was one of the swell things you could count on.
I thought I had paid for everything. Not like the woman pays and pays and pays. No idea of retribution or punishment. Just exchange of values. You gave up something and got something else. Or you worked for something. You paid some way for everything that was any good. I paid my way into enough things that I liked, so that I had a good time. Either you paid by learning about them, or by experience, or by taking chances, or by money. Enjoying living was learning to get your money’s worth. The world was a good place to buy in. It seemed like a fine philosophy. In five years, I though, it will seem just as silly as all the other fine philosophies I’ve had.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“Wherever God erects a house of prayer, The Devil always builds a chapel there; And 'twill be found upon examination The latter has the largest congregation.”
― Daniel Defoe, History of the Plague in London

“Once ‘free’ in the streets, what then? Fear and panic could destroy the city as much as plague itself. Many of the doctors fled, along with the rich and powerful; quacks preyed on the poor with their neverfail miracle drugs. Churches and conventicles and synagogues were empty. Neighbours informed against each other. People lied to each other – and to themselves. (It’s just a headache. Just a little bruise. I’ll feel better if I go for a walk.) Worse – there were stories of infected people deliberately concealing their telltale ‘tokens’ and going out into the streets trying to infect others.”
― Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year

“But the past is the biggest country of all, and there's a reason one gives in to the desire to set stories in the past: almost everything good seems located in the past, perhaps that's an illusion, but I feel nostalgic for every era before I was born; and one is freer of modern inhibitions, perhaps because one bears no responsibility for the past, sometimes I feel simply ashamed of the time in which I live.”
― Susan Sontag, In America

“Δεν του τύχαινε να συχνά να κάνει όνειρα. Απ'όλα περισσότερο του έλειπε ο αισθηματισμός, κ'η φαντασία του ανάδινε μια λάμψη τυφλωτική και κρύα. Φλόγα δίχως θερμότητα, σέλας πολικό. Τη φαντασία τη φτερώνει ο ενθουσιασμός, όμως αυτός δε γνώρισε ποτέ του ενθουσιασμούς. (...) Μα κάποτε, κινημένος από την οργή, ρέμβαζε. Η οργή η ανικανοποίητη ρεμβάζει, για να χορτάσει με τις σάρκες της.”
― Άγγελος Τερζάκης, Η μενεξεδένια πολιτεία

“Είτανε μιά από τις εξαντλητικές εκείνες, τις υπεράνθρωπες νίκες, που αν δεν τις έτρωγε η αφάνεια της καθημερινής ζωής, αν είτανε δυνατό να γίνουν με κάθε τους λεπτομέρεια γνωστές, θα κινούσαν το θαυμασμό. Έτσι, συχνά, για τα μέτρια αποτελέσματα, χρειάζεται να χυθεί ο αιματερός ιδρώτας, όταν οι μεγάλες πράξεις γίνονται με μια χειρονομία απλή.”
― Άγγελος Τερζάκης, Η μενεξεδένια πολιτεία

“Στο βάθος, πίσω κι'απ'αυτήν την απόφαση να φανεί τίμιος, δεν είτανε παρά ο εγωισμός του που αγωνιούσε. Η ανάγκη της ανάτασης, ο πόθος του ηρωισμού που θα μας εξυψώσει στα μάτια του εαυτού μας, μήπως δεν είναι το συνηθέστερο ελατήριο κάθε μας πράξης ενάρετης; Έτσι πίσω κι απ'την πιο αγνή θυσία, κρύβεται η στενή ιδιοτέλεια της φιλαρέσκειας, ενός μεταρσιωμένου, πες, ναρκισσισμού. Κι' ο δισταγμός ανάμεσα σε μια χειρονομία ωραία ή μια κακοήθεια, κρύβει την ίδια και κοινή αγωνία: Τη δίψα της περηφάνειας. Της αγγελικής ή της σατανικής.”
― Άγγελος Τερζάκης, Η μενεξεδένια πολιτεία

“Η σύναξη εδώ των ψυχών, μέσα στο ίδιο χωνευτήρι, έχει προικίσει την πολιτεία με μια δική της, ανεξάρτητη ζωή, κάποιαν υπερφυσική ύπαρξη που χτυπάει μέσαθε, σα μεγάλη υποχθόνια καρδιά. Το γέννημα τούτο του πλήθους απαρνήθηκε τη φύτρα του και τώρα, θεριεμένο σε τέρας συμβολικό, κυβερνάει την ανθρωπομάζα. Το δουλεύουν οι άνθρωποι νυχτοήμερα, το ποτίζουν με τον ιδρώτα τους, του προσφέρνουν τροφή την καρδιά τους. Φευγαλέα, μυστικά, το χνώτο του γλυστράει στο αίμα τους και το δαιμονίζει. Κυβερνάει η πολιτεία τους ανθρώπους σα θεότητα απόκρυφη, δυναστική, με το αόρατο γνέψιμο της Μοίρας.”
― Άγγελος Τερζάκης, Η μενεξεδένια πολιτεία

“Δυο εχθροί, ένας απ'έξω, ένας από μέσα. Πουθενά γλυτωμός άλλος από τη μαγκουφιά της ερημιάς στα γερατειά. Κήρυξαν σε διωγμό τον έρωτα, την πράξη την ερωτική, γιατί νομίζετε; Για να κεντρίσουν τη ζήτηση, να σε βασανίσουν σοφά με τη στέρηση, να σε κατασπαράξουν με τον πόθο. Ψυχολογικός καταναγκασμός! Υψηλή τέχνη!... Προσέξατε τα κορίτσια σας, το νου σας μην παραστρατήσουν! Διδάξετε τους καλά το εμπόριο, είναι πράξη ανώτερης ηθικής. Και πέστε τους πως είναι αίσχος να πουλάνε το κορμί τους. Την ψυχή τους, αυτήν, μπορούνε να την πουλάνε λεύτερα. Ο σκοπός είναι "ιερός"!”
― Άγγελος Τερζάκης, Η μενεξεδένια πολιτεία