Tom Key > Tom's Quotes

“Un paraíso conseguido sin esfuerzo no entusiasma al creyente.”
― Pío Baroja

“¿Qué duda cabe que el mundo que conocemos es el resultado del reflejo de la parte de cosmos del horizonte sensible en nuestro cerebro? Este reflejo unido, contrastado, con las imágenes reflejadas en los cerebros de los demás hombres que han vivido y que viven, es nuestro conocimiento del mundo, es nuestro mundo. ¿Es así, en realidad, fuera de nosotros? No lo sabemos, no lo podremos saber jamás.”
― Pío Baroja, El árbol de la ciencia

“¿es que no habrá plan ninguno para vivir con cierto decoro?”
― Pío Baroja, El árbol de la ciencia

“Dejemos las conclusiones para los idiotas.”
― Pío Baroja

“Cuando el hombre se mira mucho a sí mismo, llega a no saber cuál es su cara y cuál es su careta”
― Pío Baroja

“Before you act, listen.
Before you read, think.
Before you spend, earn.
Before you criticize, wait.
Before you pray, forgive.
Before you quit, try.”
― Ernst Hemmingway

“Last time I was down South I walked into this restaurant, and this white waitress came up to me and said: 'We don't serve colored people here.' "I said: 'that's all right, I don't eat colored people. Bring me a whole fried chicken.”
― Dick Gregory

“No kid in the world, no woman in the world should ever raise a hand against a no-good daddy. That's already been taken care of: A Man Who Destroys His Own Home Shall Inherit the Wind.”
― Dick Gregory

“It is moonlight. Alone in the silence
I ascend my stairs once more,
While waves remote in pale blue starlight
Crash on a white sand shore.
It is moonlight. The garden is silent.
I stand in my room alone.
Across my wall, from the far-off moon,
A rain of fire is thrown.
There are houses hanging above the stars,
And stars hung under the sea,
And a wind from the long blue vault of time
Waves my curtains for me.
I wait in the dark once more,
swung between space and space:
Before the mirror I lift my hands
And face my remembered face.”
― Conrad Aiken

“It's time to make love, douse the glim; The fireflies twinkle and dim; The stars lean together Like birds of a feather, And the loin lies down with the limb.”
― Conrad Aiken

“It was gentler here, softer, its seethe the quietest of whispers, as if, in deference to a drawing room, it had quite deliberately put on its 'manners'; it kept itself out of sight, obliterated itself, but distinctly with an air of saying, 'Ah, but just wait! Wait till we are alone together! Then I will begin to tell you something new! Something white! something cold! something sleepy! something of cease, and peace, and the long bright curve of space! Tell them to go away. Banish them. Refuse to speak. Leave them, go upstairs to your room, turn out the light and get into bed - I will go with you, I will be waiting for you, I will tell you a better story than Little Kay of the Skates, or The Snow Ghost - I will surround your bed, I will close the windows, pile a deep drift against the door, so that none will ever again be able to enter. Speak to them!...' It seemed as if the little hissing voice came from a slow white spiral of falling flakes in the corner by the front window - but he could not be sure.

("Silent Snow, Secret Snow")”
― Conrad Aiken, Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural

“The Bohemian who tires of life, who gives up by retirement into insamity or suicide, is not necessarily one who had failed in what he wants to express.”
― Emily Hahn, Romantic Rebels: An Informal History of Bohemianism in America

“What you have heard is true. I was in his house.
His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His
daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the
night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol
on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on
its black cord over the house. On the television
was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles
were embedded in the walls around the house to
scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his
hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings
like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of
lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for
calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes,
salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed
the country. There was a brief commercial in
Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was
some talk of how difficult it had become to govern.
The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel
told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the
table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say
nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to
bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on
the table. They were like dried peach halves. There
is no other way to say this. He took one of them in
his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a
water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of
fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone,
tell your people they can go f--- themselves. He
swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held
the last of his wine in the air. Something for your
poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor
caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on
the floor were pressed to the ground.”
― Carolyn Forché

“The heart is the toughest part of the body.
Tenderness is in the hands.”
― Carolyn Forché, The Country Between Us: The Achingly Sensual Political Poetry from a Journalist in El Salvador

“As my father always used to tell me, 'You see, son, there's always someone in the world worse off than you.' And I always used to think, 'So?”
― Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America

“All I ask is one thing, and I’m asking this particularly of young people: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism, for the record, it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.”
― Conan O'Brien

“Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying “yes” begins things. Saying “yes” is how things grow. Saying “yes” leads to knowledge. “Yes” is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say “yes'.”
― Stephen Colbert

“Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad.”
― Henry Kissinger

“Every victory is only the price of admission to a more difficult problem”
― Henry Kissinger

“The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.”
― Henry Kissinger

“I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.”
― Henry Kissinger

“Poor old Germany. Too big for Europe, too small for the world”
― Henry Kissinger

“In the end, peace can be achieved only by hegemony or by balance of power.”
― Henry Kissinger

“Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.”
― Henry Kissinger

“Since Peter the Great, Russia had been expanding at the rate of one Belgium per year.”
― Henry Kissinger

“Because complexity inhibits flexibility, early choices are especially crucial.”
― Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy

“Wer das Öl kontrolliert, ist in der Lage, ganze Nationen zu kontrollieren; wer die Nahrung kontrolliert, kontrolliert die Menschen”
― Henry Kissinger

“And history teaches this iron law of revolutions: the more extensive the eradication of existing authority, the more its successors must rely on naked power to establish themselves. For,in the end,legitimacy involves an acceptance of authority without compulsion; its absence turns every contest into a test of strength.”
― Henry Kissinger

“I’ve had it with all stingy-hearted sons of bitches.
A heart is to be spent.”
― Stephen Dunn, Different Hours

“The decision to kiss for the first time is the most crucial in any love story. It changes the relationship of two people much more strongly than even the final surrender; because this kiss already has within it that surrender.”
― Emil Ludwig