Mike Rithgin > Mike's Quotes

“Freedom lies in being bold.”
― Robert Frost

“All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue.”
― Franz Kafka

“I don't want to understand anything now. I want to stick to the fact. I made up my mind long time ago. If I try to understand anything, I shall be false to the fact, and I have determined to stick to the fact.”
― Dostoevsky - Karamazov Bothers

“I don't think the moral is good; and if any of you thuckeens go about imitating Anty in her laziness, you'll find it won't thrive with you as it did with her. She was beautiful beyond compare, which none of you are, and she had three powerful fairies to help her besides.”
― W.B. Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry

“The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I should reply, 'Create silence'.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts.”
― Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

“He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God's providence to lead him aright”
― Blaise Pascal

“Obedience, fasting, and prayer are laughed at, yet only through them lies the way to real true freedom. I cut off my superfluous and unnecessary desires, I subdue my proud and wanton will and chastise it with obedience, and with God's help I attain freedom of spirit and with it spiritual joy.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Men seek rest in a struggle against difficulties; and when they have conquered these, rest becomes insufferable.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“I do not read advertisements. I would spend all of my time wanting things. ”
― Franz Kafka

“Only by acceptance of the past, can you alter it”
― T.S. Eliot

“It is as if a person were a prisoner, and he had not only the intention to escape, which would perhaps be attainable, but also, and indeed simultaneously, the intention to rebuild the prison as a pleasure dome for himself. But if he escapes, he cannot rebuild, and if he rebuilds, he cannot escape.”
― Franz Kafka, Letter to His Father

“Though these young men unhappily fail to understand that the sacrifice of life is, in many cases, the easiest of all sacrifices, and that to sacrifice, for instance, five or six years of their seething youth to hard and tedious study, if only to multiply tenfold their powers of serving the truth and the cause they have set before them as their goal such a sacrifice is utterly beyond the strength of many of them.”
― Dostoevsky F.

“In order to arrive at what you are not, you must go through the way in which you are not.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Do you not know that there comes a midnight hour when every one has to throw off his mask? Do you believe that life will always let itself be mocked? Do you think you can slip away a little before midnight in order to avoid this? Or are you not terrified by it? I have seen men in real life who so long deceived others that at last their true nature could not reveal itself;... In every man there is something which to a certain degree prevents him from becoming perfectly transparent to himself; and this may be the case in so high a degree, he may be so inexplicably woven into relationships of life which extend far beyond himself that he almost cannot reveal himself. But he who cannot reveal himself cannot love, and he who cannot love is the most unhappy man of all.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“Luxuries are easy to take up but very difficult to give up”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“There is only one salvation for you: take yourself up, and make yourself responsible for all the sins of men. For indeed it is so, my friend, and the moment you make yourself sincerely responsible for everything and everyone, you will see at once that it is really so, that it is you who are guilty on behalf of all and for all. Whereas by shifting your own laziness and powerlessness onto others, you will end by sharing in Satan's pride and murmuring against God.
The Brothers Karamazov
Book VI - The Russian Monk, Chapter 3 - Conversations and Exhortations of Father Zosima.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for miseries and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.”
― Blaise Pascal

“I am what is around me.”
― Wallace Stevens

“By interpreting freedom as the propagation and immediate gratification of needs, people distort their own nature, for they engender in themselves a multitude of pointless and foolish desires, habits, and incongruous stratagems. Their lives are motivated only by mutual envy, sensuality, and ostentation.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“Always fall in with what you're asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going. Not against: with.”
― Robert Frost

“Evil is whatever distracts.”
― Franz Kafka

“[Six principles that make for a good story:] 1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature; 2. total objectivity; 3. truthful descriptions of persons and objects; 4. extreme brevity; 5. audacity and originality: flee the stereotype; 6. compassion.”
― Anton Chekhov

“Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.”
― Blaise Pascal

“The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real.”
― Wallace Stevens, The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination

“...I believe that you are sincere and good at heart. If you do not attain happiness, always remember that you are on the right road, and try not to leave it. Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute. Avoid being scornful, both to others and to yourself. What seems to you bad within you will grow purer from the very fact of your observing it in yourself. Avoid fear, too, though fear is only the consequence of every sort of falsehood. Never be frightened at your own faint-heartedness in attaining love.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”
― George Orwell

“To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“he was partly a young man of our time - that is, honest by nature, demanding the truth, seeking it and believing in it, and in that belief demanding immediate participation in it with all the strength of his soul; demanding an immediate deed, with an unfailing desire to sacrifice everything for this deed, even life. Although, unfortunately, these young men do not understand that the sacrifice of life is, perhaps, the easiest of all sacrifices in many cases, while to sacrifice, for example, five or six years of their ebulliently youthful life to hard, difficult studies, to learning, in order to increase tenfold their strength to serve the very truth and the very deed that they loved and set out to accomplish - such sacrifice is often almost beyond the strength of many of them.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamozov