Martin > Martin's Quotes

“Life is full of strange absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true.”
― Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author

“Whatever is a reality today, whatever you touch and believe in and that seems real for you today, is going to be, like the reality of yesterday, an illusion tomorrow.”
― Luigi Pirandello

“If only we could see in advance all the harm that can come from the good we think we are doing.”
― Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author

“It is so.When YOU think so”
― Luigi Pirandello

“I present myself to you in a form suitable to the relationship I wish to achieve to you.”
― Luigi Pirandello

“You don’t appreciate the fact that madmen are very lucky.”
― Luigi Pirandello, Enrico IV - Diana e la Tuda

“Knowledge becomes really such only when it is assimilated in the mind of the learner and shows in his character.”
― Inazo Nitobe, Bushido: The Soul of Japan

“A truly brave man is ever serene; he is never taken by surprise; nothing ruffles the equanimity of his spirit. In the heat of battle he remains cool; in the midst of catastrophes he keeps level his mind. Earthquakes do not shake him, he laughs at storms. We admire him as truly great, who, in the menacing presence of danger or death, retains his self-possession; who, for instance, can compose a poem under impending peril or hum a strain in the face of death. Such indulgence betraying no tremor in the writing or in the voice, is taken as an infallible index of a large nature—of what we call a capacious mind (Yoyū), which, far from being pressed or crowded, has always room for something more.”
― Inazo Nitobe, Bushido, The Soul Of Japan

“the feeling of distress is the root of benevolence, therefore a benevolent man is ever mindful of those who are suffering and in distress.”
― Inazo Nitobe, Bushido, the Soul of Japan

“What is important is to try to develop insights and wisdom rather than mere knowledge, respect someone's character rather than his learning, and nurture men of character rather than mere talents.”
― Inazo Nitobe

“A samurai was essentially a man of action.”
― Inazo Nitobe, Bushido, The Soul Of Japan

“Human life has sorrow;" "They who meet must part;" "He that is born must die;”
― Inazo Nitobe, Bushido, the Soul of Japan

“dishonor is like a scar on a tree, which time, instead of effacing, only helps to enlarge." Mencius”
― Inazo Nitobe, Bushido, the Soul of Japan

“Tranquillity is courage in repose.”
― Inazo Nitobe, Bushido, the Soul of Japan

“Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet.”
― Robert E. Howard, The Complete Chronicles of Conan

“Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.”
― Robert E. Howard

“I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom's realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer's Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.”
― Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague De Camp, Queen of the Black Coast

“Barbarianism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is the whim of circumstance. And barbarianism must ultimately triumph”
― Robert E. Howard

“What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie?
I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky.
The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing;
Rush in and die, dogs—I was a man before I was a king.”
― Robert E. Howard

“The more I see of what you call civilization, the more highly I think of what you call savagery!”
― Robert E. Howard, King Kull

“I'm not going out of my way looking for devils; but I wouldn't step out of my path to let one go by.”
― Robert E. Howard

“I think the real reason so many youngsters are clamoring for freedom of some vague sort, is because of unrest and dissatisfaction with present conditions; I don't believe this machine age gives full satisfaction in a spiritual way, if the term may be allowed. ”
― Robert E. Howard

“My characters are more like men than these real men are, see. They're rough and rude, they got hands and they got bellies. They hate and they lust; break the skin of civilization and you find the ape, roaring and red-handed.”
― Robert E. Howard

“When a nation forgets her skill in war, when her religion becomes a mockery, when the whole nation becomes a nation of money-grabbers, then the wild tribes, the barbarians drive in... Who will our invaders be? From whence will they come?”
― Robert E. Howard

“But not all men seek rest and peace; some are born with the spirit of the storm in their blood.”
― Robert E. Howard

“I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, & am content.”
― Robert E. Howard, Conan the Barbarian Omnibus -The Original Stories

“It is only the promise of death that makes life worth living.”
― Robert E. Howard

“Our great mistake is to try to exact from each person virtues which he does not possess, and to neglect the cultivation of those which he has.”
― Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian

“He had reached that moment in life, different for each one of us, when a man abandonds himself to his demon or to his genius, following a mysterious law which bids him either to destroy or outdo himself.”
― Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian