Surya V.n > Surya's Quotes

“I am alone, I thought, and they are everybody.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead

“What harbor can receive you more securely than a great library?”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.”
― Aristotle

“If just once you were depressed for no reason, you have been so all your life without knowing it.
Becoming: an agony without an ending.The older I grow, the less I enjoy performing my little Hamlet. The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death. If History had a goal, how lamentable would be the fate of those of us who have accomplished nothing!
On the frontiers of the self: ‘What I have suffered, what I am suffering, no one will ever know, not even I’. Events - tumours of time.
Man secretes disaster.
The secret of my adaptation to life? - I’ve changed despairs the way I’ve changed shirts. Each day is a Rubicon in which I aspire to be drowned.”
― Emil Cioran

“If we could sleep twenty-four hours a day, we would soon return to the primordial slime, the beatitude of that perfect torpor before Genesis-the dream of every consciousness sick of itself.”
― Emil Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

“Some of Mozart's Andantes emanate an ethereal desolation, a sort of dream funeral in another life.”
― Emil Cioran, المياه كلها بلون الغرق

“No matter what you touch and you wish to know about, you end up in a sea of mystery. You see there’s no beginning or end, you can go back as far as you want, forward as far as you want, but you never got to it, it’s like the essence, it’s that right, it remains. This is the greatest damn thing about the universe. That we can know so much, recognize so much, dissect, do everything, and we can’t grasp it. And it’s meant to be that way, do y’know. And there’s where our reverence should come in. Before everything, the littlest thing as well as the greatest. The tiniest, the horseshit, as well as the angels, do y’know what I mean. It’s all mystery. All impenetrable, as it were, right?”
― Henry Miller, This Is Henry, Henry Miller from Brooklyn: Convers

“The violence of positivity does not deprive, it saturates; it does not exclude, it exhausts.”
― Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society

“Nostalgia, more than anything, gives us the shudder of our own imperfection. This is why with Chopin we feel so little like gods.”
― Emil Cioran

“The true life is absent.' But we are in the world. Metaphysics arises and is maintained in this alibi.”
― Emmanuel Lévinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority

“Come, see the true
flowers
of this pained world.”
― Basho, On Love and Barley: Haiku of Basho

“The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.”
― Emily Dickinson

“How can man know himself? He is a dark and veiled thing; and whereas the hare has seven skins, the human being can shed seven times 70 skins and still not be able to say: ‘This is really you, this is no longer an outer shell. Besides, it is an agonizing, dangerous undertaking to dig down into yourself in this way, to force your way by the shortest route down the shaft of your own being. How easy it is to do damage to yourself that no doctor can heal. And moreover, why should it be necessary, since everything – our friendships and hatreds, the way we look, our handshakes, the things we remember and forget, our books, our handwriting – bears witness to our being.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations

“Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets, for it and knowledge can raise men to the divine.”
― Ludwig van Beethoven

“Poetry remakes and prolongs language; every poetic language begins by being a secret language, that is, the creation of a personal universe, of a completely closed world. The purest poetic act seems to re-create language from an inner experience that … reveals the essence of things.”
― Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy

“Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.

This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose...

...Describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty - describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world’s sounds – wouldn’t you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attentions to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. - And if out of this turning-within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY - MAN

“...art must must carry man's craving for the ideal, must be an expression of his reaching out towards it; that art must give man hope and faith. And the more hopeless the world in the artist's version, the more clearly perhaps must we see the ideal that stands in opposition - otherwise life becomes impossible! Art symbolises the meaning of our existence.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time

“கவிதை ஒரு சொல் விளையாட்டோ வெறும் அழகியல் மாத்திரமோ அல்ல. அது தன்னுள் கொண்டிருக்கும் இலட்சியம் அபரிமிதமானது. கவிதைகளில் வெளிப்படுவது நமது ஆளுமைதான் என்று தெரிந்து கொண்டால் நாம் நமது ஆளுமை வளர்ச்சியில் நாட்டம் கொள்ள தொடங்கிவிடுவோம்.

ஆளுமை வளர்ச்சி என்பது இடையறாத மெய்மை அறிதலன்றி வேறொன்றும் இல்லை என்ற நிலைக்கு கொண்டு வந்துவிடும். எனக்கு புனைவுகள் அற்ற எளிமை மிக முக்கியமாகத் தோன்றும்.”
― தேவதேவன்

“A year doesn't matter; ten years are nothing. To be an artist means not to compute or count; it means to ripen as the tree, which does not force its sap, but stands unshaken in the storms of spring with no fear that summer might not follow. It will come regardless. But it comes only to those who live as though eternity stretches before them, carefree, silent, and endless.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“No man is an island, said John Donne, but I humbly dare to add: No man or woman is an island, but every one of us is a peninsula, half attached to the mainland, half facing the ocean – one half connected to family and friends and culture and tradition and country and nation and sex and language and many other things, and the other half wanting to be left alone to face the ocean.

I think we ought to be allowed to remain peninsulas. Every social and political system that turns each of us into a Donnean island and the rest of humankind into an enemy or a rival is a monster. But at the same time every social and political and ideological system that wants to turn each of us into no more than a molecule of the mainland is also a monstrosity. The condition of peninsula is the proper human condition. That's what we are and that's what we deserve to remain.”
― Amos Oz, How to Cure a Fanatic

“Art, music, poetry, and everything else that I do have this one purpose—increasing the intensity of my consciousness and life”
― Biman Nath, Homi J Bhabha: A Renaissance Man among Scientists

“When we were younger, my mother had regularly read to us from a book of Japanese fables, having saved nothing from her own childhood. One story had been about a mountain, whose peak was surrounded by a ring of clouds, like a necklace, and who had been so beautiful that the greatest of all mountains had fallen in love with her. But the mountain with the clouds had not returned the other’s affections, and instead had pined after a smaller, flatter mountain below. The great mountain had been so shocked and enraged by this, it had erupted into a volcano, covering the skies with smoke and darkness and pain for many days. I remember for some reason feeling incredibly moved by this story, the love of the beautiful cloud mountain for the kinder, smaller one, the torment of the volcano, as if, at that age, their passions had seemed more real to me than any human ones.”
― Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

“Some poems take us places where no words reach, no thought, they take you up to the core itself, life stops for one moment and becomes beautiful, it becomes clear with regret and happiness. Some poems change the day, the night, your life. Some poems make you forget, forget the sadness, the hopelessness, you forget your waterproof, the frost comes to you, says, got you, and you're dead.”
― Jón Kalman Stefánsson, Himnaríki og helvíti

“I have seen the universe! It is made of poems!”
― Sjon, The Blue Fox

“இதம்

நூலின் இருபக்கங்களையும் பறவையின் இறகுபோல விரித்து
நீங்கள் வாசிக்கும்போது அதன் தண்டுவடம் மெலிதாக
நடுங்கத் துவங்கினால் சற்று நேரம் மார்பின் மீது கவிழ்த்து வாஞ்சையுடன் அதன் முதுகை
வருடுவது இதமானது.”
― Yavanika Sriram, கிடக்கட்டும் கழுதை [Kidakattum Kazhuthai]

“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“கற்பனாவாதம் ஒரு வயதில் நம்மை ஆட்கொள்கிறது. மண்ணில் கால்தொடாத உலகங்களில் வாழ்கிறோம். பின்னர் மெல்ல மெல்ல யதார்த்தங்களுக்குள் நுழைகிறோம். வெற்றுக்கற்பனைகள் என கற்பனாவாதத்தை இகழவும் விலகவும் தொடங்குகிறோம். கற்பனாவாதத்தை விட்டு விலகுவது முதிர்ச்சியின் ஓர் அடையாளம் என்று சொல்லப்படுகிறது. அது உண்மை அல்ல. கற்பனாவாதத்தை விட்டு விலகுவதென்பது நடைமுறைத் தர்க்கபுத்தி வலுவடைவதன் அடையாளம் மட்டுமே.அதன் நன்மைகள் பல உண்டு. ஆனால் இழப்புகளும் அதற்கிணையானவை. கற்பனாவாதம் மட்டுமே மொழியை அதன் உச்சங்கள் நோக்கி கொண்டு செல்கிறது. யதார்த்தவாதம் என்றுமே மொழியின் நடைமுறைத்தன்மையை மீறுவதில்லை. மொழி அதற்கு சிறகு அல்ல, ஒரு பயன்படுபொருள் மட்டுமே. ஆகவே மொழியில் ஓர் இயந்திரக்கச்சிதத்தை மட்டுமே யதார்த்தவாதம் அடைகிறது. அந்தக் கச்சிதமே மொழியின் சிறந்த நிலை என நம்புபவர்கள் மொழியை அறிவதே இல்லை. கச்சிதமான நடையே நல்ல நடை என நம்புவதுபோல இலக்கியத்தில் நுணுக்கமான வீழ்ச்சி பிறிதொன்றில்லை. ஏனென்றால் அப்படி கச்சிதம் என ஒன்றில்லை. கச்சிதம் என நாம் எண்ணுவது கொடுப்பவனும் பெறுபவனும் சந்திக்கும் அந்த தொடர்புறுத்தல்புள்ளியைச் சார்ந்தது. ஆனால் அது மிக எளிதில் மாறிவிடும்.”
― Jeyamohan