Garrett > Garrett's Quotes

“Chance favors the prepared mind.”
― Louis Pasteur

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”
― Elie Wiesel

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”
― Andre Gide, Autumn Leaves

“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.”
― Dante Alighieri

“They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.”
― Philip Larkin, High Windows

“I have no enemies. But my friends don't like me.”
― Philip Larkin

“Poetry is nobody’s business except the poet’s, and everybody else can fuck off.”
― Philip Larkin

“How little our careers express what lies in us, and yet how much time they take up. It's sad, really.”
― Philip Larkin, Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

“I feel the only thing you can do about life is to preserve it, by art if you're an artist, by children if you're not.”
― Philip Larkin, Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

“Something, like nothing, happens anywhere.”
― Philip Larkin

“Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.”
― Christopher Hitchens, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever

“Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that's where it should stay.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.”
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

“What is it you most dislike? Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“What do you most value in your friends?
Their continued existence.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him will believeth in anything. - Hitchens 3:16”
― Christopher Hitchens

“The governor of Texas, who, when asked if the Bible should also be taught in Spanish, replied that ‘if English was good enough for Jesus, then it’s good enough for me’.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“Madness it is to hope that human minds
can ever understand the Infinite
that comprehends Three Persons in One Being.

Be satisfied with quia unexplained,
O Human race! If you knew everything,
no need for Mary to have borne a son.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Volume 2: Purgatorio

“Books. Cats. Life is good.”
― T.S. Eliot

“. . . no good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art. . . . no great man ever stops working till he has reached his point of failure: that is to say, his mind is always far in advance of his powers of execution, and the latter will now and then give way in trying to follow it; besides that he will always give to the inferior portions of his work only such inferior attention as they require; and according to his greatness he becomes so accustomed to the feeling of dissatisfaction with the best he can do, that in moments of lassitude or anger with himself he will not care though the beholder be dissatisfied also. I believe there has only been one man who would not acknowledge this necessity, and strove always to reach perfection, Leonardo; the end of his vain effort being merely that he would take ten years to a picture and leave it unfinished. And therefore, if we are to have great men working at all, or less men doing their best, the work will be imperfect, however beautiful. Of human work none but what is bad can be perfect, in its own bad way.”
― John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice

“Whatever exists, he said. Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.

He looked about at the dark forest in which they were bivouacked. He nodded toward the specimens he'd collected. These anonymous creatures, he said, may seem little or nothing in the world. Yet the smallest crumb can devour us. Any smallest thing beneath yon rock out of men's knowing. Only nature can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the earth.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is God.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume. The sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness
And in the taste confounds the appetite.
Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“Did time move forward, through people, or did people move forward through it, like clouds across the sky?”
― Anthony Doerr, About Grace

“One by one the ponds gulped down their ice like big, painful pills.”
― Anthony Doerr, About Grace