Eli Niktab > Eli's Quotes

“Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“All morons hate it when you call them a moron.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I think... if it is true that
there are as many minds as there
are heads, then there are as many
kinds of love as there are hearts.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Illness is the most heeded of doctors: to kindness and wisdom we make promises only; pain we obey.”
― Marcel Proust, Sodom and Gomorrah

“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“There is no other way to guard yourself against flattery than by making men understand that telling you the truth will not offend you.”
― Machiavelli Niccolo, The Prince

“Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“People should either be caressed or crushed. If you do them minor damage they will get their revenge; but if you cripple them there is nothing they can do. If you need to injure someone, do it in such a way that you do not have to fear their vengeance.”
― Niccolo Machiavelli

“Men never do good unless necessity drives them to it; but when they are free to choose and can do just as they please, confusion and disorder become rampant.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli

“I have nothing but contempt for the people who despise money. They are hypocrites or fools. Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five. Without an adequate income half the possibilities of life are shut off. The only thing to be careful about is that you do not pay more than a shilling for the shilling you earn. You will hear people say that poverty is the best spur to the artist. They have never felt the iron of it in their flesh. They do not know how mean it makes you. It exposes you to endless humiliation, it cuts your wings, it eats into your soul like a cancer.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“My library is an archive of longings.”
― Susan Sontag, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

“Depression is melancholy minus its charms.”
― Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor

“The only interesting answers are those which destroy the questions.”
― Susan Sontag

“My emotional life: dialectic between craving for privacy and need to submerge myself in a passionate relationship to another.”
― Susan Sontag, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

“My tidyness and untidyness are full of complicated feelings of regret and sadness.”
― Natalia Ginzberg

“I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot. ”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“And I can't be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“Just remember, when someone has an accent, it means that he knows one more language than you do.”
― Sidney Sheldon, Windmills of the Gods

“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”
― Victor Frankl

“An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.”
― Victor Frankl, Man's Search For Ultimate Meaning

“Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you'll always find despair.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept

“We can't own each other's past. The question is whether we have a future together.”
― Jostein Gaarder, The Orange Girl

“Life is like a huge lottery in which only the winning tickets are visible.”
― Jostein Gaarder, The Orange Girl

“my heart has more rooms in it than a whore house”
― Gabriel Garcia Marquez

“wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

“Sorrow eats time. Be patient. Time eats sorrow.”
― Louise Erdrich, LaRose