William Alves > William's Quotes

“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“In the beginning the Universe was created.
This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before”
― Douglas Adams

“I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.”
― George Eliot

“Actually I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect 'history' to be anything but a 'long defeat' - though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory. (Letter #195)”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

“If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat.”
― Douglas Adams

“The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34).[...] Before God and with him we live without God. God allows himself to be edged out of the world and onto the cross. God is weak and powerless in the world, and that is exactly the way, the only way, in which he can be with us and help us.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“October Fullness”

Little by little, and also in great leaps,
life happened to me,
and how insignificant this business is.
These veins carried
my blood, which I scarcely ever saw,
I breathed the air of so many places
without keeping a sample of any.
In the end, everyone is aware of this:
nobody keeps any of what he has,
and life is only a borrowing of bones.
The best thing was learning not to have too much
either of sorrow or of joy,
to hope for the chance of a last drop,
to ask more from honey and from twilight.

Perhaps it was my punishment.
Perhaps I was condemned to be happy.
Let it be known that nobody
crossed my path without sharing my being.
I plunged up to the neck
into adversities that were not mine,
into all the sufferings of others.
It wasn’t a question of applause or profit.
Much less. It was not being able
to live or breathe in this shadow,
the shadow of others like towers,
like bitter trees that bury you,
like cobblestones on the knees.

Our own wounds heal with weeping,
our own wounds heal with singing,
but in our own doorway lie bleeding
widows, Indians, poor men, fishermen.
The miner’s child doesn’t know his father
amidst all that suffering.

So be it, but my business
was
the fullness of the spirit:
a cry of pleasure choking you,
a sigh from an uprooted plant,
the sum of all action.

It pleased me to grow with the morning,
to bathe in the sun, in the great joy
of sun, salt, sea-light and wave,
and in that unwinding of the foam
my heart began to move,
growing in that essential spasm,
and dying away as it seeped into the sand.”
― Pablo Neruda, The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems

“Non est ad astra mollis e terris via" - "There is no easy way from the earth to the stars”
― Seneca

“All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso

“Pulvis et umbra sumus. (We are but dust and shadow.)”
― Horace, The Odes of Horace

“VI VERI VENIVERSUM VIVUS VICI.
By the Power of Truth, I, while living, have Conquered the Universe.”
― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta #2

“Omnia mutantur, nihil interit (everything changes, nothing perishes).”
― Publius Ovidius Naso, Metamorphoses

“A man leaves his great house because he's bored
With life at home, and suddenly returns,
Finding himself no happier abroad.
He rushes off to his villa driving like mad,
You'ld think he's going to a house on fire,
And yawns before he's put his foot inside,
Or falls asleep and seeks oblivion,
Or even rushes back to town again.
So each man flies from himself (vain hope, because
It clings to him the more closely against his will)
And hates himself because he is sick in mind
And does not know the cause of his disease.”
― Lucretius

“Pactum serva" - "Keep the faith”
― Horace

“Haec ego non multis (scribo), sed tibi: satis enim magnum alter alteri theatrum sumus. I am writing this not to many, but to you: certainly we are a great enough audience for each other.”
― Epicurus

“Amor vincit omnia”
― Geoffrey Chaucer

“Veni, vidi, flevi.

I came. I saw. I cried.”
― Dorian Cirrone, Prom Kings and Drama Queens

“Ardet nec consumitur," Melina said. "Burned but not destroyed.”
― Ransom Riggs, Hollow City

“Ars longa,
vita brevis,
occasio praeceps,
experimentum periculosum,
iudicium difficile.

Life is short,
[the] art long,
opportunity fleeting,
experiment dangerous,
judgment difficult.”
― Hippocrates

“Homo homini lupis est.”
― Plautus

“Nihil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio

(Nothing is more hateful to wisdom than excessive cleverness)”
― Francesco Petrarca

“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”
― Décimo Junio Juvenal

“Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.”
― Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor

“Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.”
― Isaac Asimov

“Krishnamurti, a great Indian sage, once said: “You can take a piece of wood that you brought back from your garden, and each day present it with a flower. At the end of a month you will adore it, and the idea of not giving it an offering will be a sin.” In other words, everything that you are used to, once done long enough, starts to seem natural, even though it might not be.”
― Julien Smith, The Flinch

“You see, evil always contains the seeds of its own destruction. It is ultimately negative, and therefore encompasses its downfall even at its moments of apparent triumph. No matter how grandiose, how well-planned, how apparently foolproof of an evil plan, the inherent sinfulness will by definition rebound upon its instigators. No matter how apparently successful it may seem upon the way, at the end it will wreck itself. It will founder upon the rocks of iniquity and sink headfirst to vanish without trace into the seas of oblivion.”
― Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch