Sami Mg > Sami's Quotes

“Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“The universe is wider than our views of it.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden & Civil Disobedience

“A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; -- not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden & Civil Disobedience

“Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through Church and State, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin, having a point d'appui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place where you might found a wall or a state, or set a lamp-post safely, or perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future ages might know how deep a freshet of shams and appearances had gathered from time to time.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much;
Who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children;
Who has filled his niche and accomplished his task;
Who has never lacked appreciation of Earth's beauty or failed to express it;
Who has left the world better than he found it,
Whether an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul;
Who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had;
Whose life was an inspiration;
Whose memory a benediction.”
― Bessie Anderson Stanley, More Heart Throbs Volume Two in Prose and Verse Dear to the American People And by them contributed as a Supplement to the original $10,000 Prize Book HEART THROBS

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

“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“the writing of some
men
is like a vast bridge
that carries you
over
the many things
that claw and tear.

The Wine of Forever”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new after all.”
― Abraham Lincoln

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

“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”
― Charles Bukowski

“You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.”
― Franz Kafka

“I am free and that is why I am lost.”
― Franz Kafka

“I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.”
― Franz Kafka

“A First Sign of the Beginning of Understanding is the Wish to Die.”
― Franz Kafka

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.”
― Franz Kafka

“Books are a narcotic.”
― Franz Kafka

“I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.”
― Franz Kafka

“Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”
― Franz Kafka

“A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity."

[Letter to Max Brod, July 5, 1922]”
― Franz Kafka

“Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.”
― Franz Kafka

“They say ignorance is bliss.... they're wrong ”
― Franz Kafka

“I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man.”
― Franz Kafka