Thais Mendes > Thais's Quotes

“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Oh, what fun it would be", he thought, "if one didn't have to think about happiness.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal- that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. ”
― Alvin Toffler

“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”
― Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

“There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women."

(Keynote speech at Celebrating Inspiration luncheon with the WNBA's All-Decade Team, 2006)”
― Madeleine Albright

“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”
― Joan Didion

“It was heart-shaking. Glorious. Torches, dizziness, singing. Wolves howling around us and a bull bellowing in the dark. The river ran white. It was like a film in fast motion, the moon waxing and waning, clouds rushing across the sky. Vines grew from the ground so fast they twined up the trees like snakes; seasons passing in the wink of an eye, entire years for all I know. . . . Mean we think of phenomenal change as being the very essence of time, when it's not at all. Time is something which defies spring and water, birth and decay, the good and the bad, indifferently. Something changeless and joyous and absolutely indestructible. Duality ceases to exist; there is no ego, no 'I,' and yet it's not at all like those horrid comparisons one sometimes hears in Eastern religions, the self being a drop of water swallowed by the ocean of the universe. It's more as if the universe expands to fill the boundaries of the self. You have no idea how pallid the workday boundaries of ordinary existence seem, after such an ecstasy.”
― Donna Tartt

“Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.”
― C.G. Jung

“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.”
― Oscar Wilde

“We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste!”
― Andre Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Is it better to speak or die?”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Did I want him to act? Or would I prefer a lifetime of longing provided we both kept this little Ping-Pong game going: not knowing, not-not-knowing, not-not-not-knowing? Just be quiet, say nothing, and if you can't say "yes," don't say "no," say "later." Is this why people say "maybe" when they mean "yes," but hope you'll think it's "no" when all they really mean is, Please, just ask me once more, and once more after that?”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“In the weeks we’d been thrown together that summer, our lives had scarcely touched, but we had crossed to the other bank, where time stops and heaven reaches down to earth and gives us that ration of what is from birth divinely ours. We looked the other way. We spoke about everything but. But we’ve always known, and not saying anything now confirmed it all the more. We had found the stars, you and I. And this is given once only.”
― andre aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“But I wasn’t fooling myself. I was convinced that no one in the world wanted him as physically as I did; nor was anyone willing to go the distance I was prepared to travel for him. No one had studied every bone in his body, ankles, knees, wrists, fingers, and toes, no one lusted after every ripple of muscle, no one took him to bed every night and on spotting him in the morning lying in his heaven by the pool, smiled at him, watched a smile come to his lips, and thought, Did you know I came in your mouth last night?”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“The only way to end things without too much suffering is to make the farewell a ceremony.”
― Annie Ernaux, Getting Lost

“Mãe, que é que é o mar, Mãe?" - Mar era longe, muito longe dali, espécie duma lagôa enorme, um mundo d'água sem fim, Mãe mesma nunca tinha avistado o mar, suspirava. - "Pois, Mãe, então mar é o que a gente tem saudade?”
― Guimarães Rosa

“A gente olhava Mãe, imaginava saudade. Miguilim não sabia muitas coisas. ― "Mãe, a gente então nunca vai poder ver o mar, nunca?" Ela glosava que quem-sabe não, iam não, sempre, por pobreza de longe. ― "A gente não vai, Miguilim." O Dito afirmou: ― "Acho que nunca! A gente é no sertão. Então por que é que você indaga" ― "Nada não, Dito. Mas às vezes eu queria avistar o mar, só para não ter uma tristeza...”
― João Guimarães Rosa, Campo Geral

“Dans un mois, dans un an, comment souffrirons-nous Seigneur, que tant de mers me séparent de vous. Que le jour recommence et que le jour finisse Sans que jamais Titus puisse voir Bérénice.”
― Racine, Berenice

“Tell all the truth but tell it slant.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

“Tell all the truth but tell it slant- success in circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm delight
the truth's suberp surprise
As lightning to the children eased
with explanation kind
the truth must dazzle gradually
or every man be bilnd-”
― Emily Dickinson

“When I suddenly see myself in the depths of the mirror, I take fright. I can scarcely believe that I have limits, that I am outlined and defined. I feel myself to be dispersed in the atmosphere, thinking inside other creatures, living inside things beyond myself. When I suddenly see myself in the mirror, I am not startled because I find myself ugly or beautiful. I discover, in fact, that I possess another quality. When I haven't looked at myself for some time, I almost forget that I am human, I tend to forget my past, and I find myself with the same deliverance from purpose and conscience as something that is barely alive. I am also surprised to find as I gaze into the pale mirror with open eyes that there is so much in me beyond what is known, so much that remains ever silent.”
― Clarice Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart

“Freedom isn't enough. What I desire doesn't have a name yet.”
― Clarice Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart

“Oh, living is so uncomfortable. Everything presses in: the body demands, the spirit never ceases, living is like being weary but being unable to sleep–living is upsetting. You can’t walk around naked, either in body or in spirit.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Stream of Life

“What I’m writing to you is not for reading— it’s for being.”
― Clarice Lispector, Água Viva

“To write you I first cover myself with perfume.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Stream of Life

“What kind of world does one see when one experiences it from the point of view of two and not one? What is the world like when it is experienced, developed and lived from the point of view of difference and not identity? That is what I believe love to be.”
― Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love