T.R. > T.R.'s Quotes

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#1

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

tags: cockroaches, first-sentence, insects, transformation

688 likes

#2

“And only the enlightened can recall their former lives; for the rest of us, the memories of past existences are but glints of light, twinges of longing, passing shadows, disturbingly familiar, that are gone before they can be grasped, like the passage of that silver bird on Dhaulagiri.”
― Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard

tags: reincarnation

57 likes

#3

“There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears a Human soul.”
― Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems

tags: literature, poetry, words

515 likes

#4

“He ate and drank the precious words,
His spirit grew robust;
He knew no more that he was poor,
Nor that his frame was dust.
He danced along the dingy days,
And this bequest of wings
Was but a book. What liberty
A loosened spirit brings!”
― Emily Dickinson

tags: books, literature, poetry, words

125 likes

#5

“I want to find a way of speaking to fellow human beings that will be cool rather than heated, philosophical rather than polemical, that will bring enlightenment rather than seeking to divide us into the righteous and the sinners, the saved and the damned, the sheep and the goats.”
― J.M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals

tags: animal-cruelty, nature, philosophy

66 likes

#6

“It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson in His Journals

14017 likes

#7

“When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

tags: dark, stars

3904 likes

#8

“Have mountains, and waves, and skies, no significance but what we consciously give them, when we employ them as emblems of our thoughts?”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature

tags: nature

33 likes

#9

“Leaving out appraisal also would render the biological description of the phenomena of emotion vulnerable to the caricature that emotions without an appraisal phase are meaningless events. It would be more difficult to see how beautiful and amazingly intelligent emotions can be, and how powerfully they can solve problems for us.”
― Antonio Damasio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain

tags: emotions, meaning, mind, neuropsychology, vulnerability

17 likes

#10

“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.”
― William Blake

tags: imagination, inspiration, nature, trees

838 likes

#11

“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”
― Mark Twain

34465 likes

#12

“Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.”
― Allen Saunders

tags: fate, life, misattributed-john-lennon, planning, plans

43666 likes

#13

“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.”
― Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

tags: inspirational, nature, science

354 likes

#14

“Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid surroundings, a circle of acquaintances who are not quite our enemies, the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal?”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

tags: environment, inspirational

208 likes

#15

“The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history... It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science.”
― Rachel Carson

tags: aim, biography, discovery, history, literature, literature-of-science, purpose, science, truth

67 likes

#16

“The true way goes over a rope which is not stretched at any great height but just above the ground. It seems more designed to make people stumble than to be walked upon.”
― Franz Kafka

50 likes

#17

“They did not know what we can now sense as we contemplate the course of history: that change begins in the soul before it shows in our lives...”
― Franz Kafka, The Great Wall of China

31 likes

#18

“Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.”
― Franz Kafka

160 likes

#19

“The word 'ivory' rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

12 likes

#20

“Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of inextinguishable regrets.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

tags: identity, life, regret

456 likes

#21

“With the buck before me suspended in immobility, there seems to be time for all things, time even to turn my gaze inward and see what it is that has robbed the hunt of its savour: the sense that this has become no longer a morning's hunting but an occasion on which either the proud ram bleeds to death on the ice or the old hunter misses his aim; that for the duration of this frozen moment the stars are locked in a configuration in which events are not themselves but stand for other things.”
― J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians

tags: reflective

6 likes

#22

“Do you see the slightest evidence anywhere in the universe that creation came to an end with the birth of man? Do you see the slightest evidence anywhere out there that man was the climax toward which creation had been straining from the beginning? ...Very far from it. The universe went on as before, the planet went on as before. Man's appearance caused no more stir than the appearance of jellyfish.”
― Daniel Quinn, Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

tags: evolution, philosophy

82 likes

#23

“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”
― Franz Kafka

4734 likes

#24

“How happy is the little stone
That rambles in the road alone,
And doesn't care about careers,
And exigencies never fears;
Whose coat of elemental brown
A passing universe put on;
And independent as the sun,
Associates or glows alone,
Fulfilling absolute decree
In casual simplicity.”
― Emily Dickinson

tags: autonomy, poems, poetry

662 likes

#25

“It is not down on any map; true places never are.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

927 likes

#26

“Vengeance on a dumb brute!" cried Starbuck, "that simply smote thee from blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing, Captain Ahab, seems blasphemous.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

8 likes

#27

“Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

tags: humour, telekinetics

10118 likes

#28

“The progress of human enlightenment can go no further than in picturing people not as vicious, but as mistaken.”
― Kenneth Burke

25 likes

#29

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

tags: bene-gesserit, fear, litany-against-fear, motivational, scifi

16776 likes