Dita Virga > Dita's Quotes

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard

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

“Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”
― Franz Kafka

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.”
― Franz Kafka

“I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.”
― Franz Kafka

“It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.”
― Franz Kafka

“Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“I am always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I hate actors. They never act like people. They just think they do.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“The goddam movies. They can ruin you. I'm not kidding”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead

“He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.”
― Plato, The Symposium

“According to Diotima, Love is not a god at all, but is rather a spirit that mediates between people and the objects of their desire. Love is neither wise nor beautiful, but is rather the desire for wisdom and beauty.”
― Plato, The Symposium

“At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet”
― Plato, The Symposium

“Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism. It is the belief that problems can be solved, differences resolved. It is a type of confidence. And it is fragile. It can be blackened by fear, and superstition. By the year 2050, when the conflict began, the world had fallen upon fearful, superstitious times.”
― Bernard Beckett, Genesis

“But time passes. Fear becomes a memory. Terror becomes routine; it loses its grip.”
― Bernard Beckett, Genesis

“If you want to be respected by others, the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Insulted and Humiliated

“And the air was full of Thoughts and Things to Say. But at times like these, only the Small Things are ever said. Big Things lurk unsaid inside.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“D’you know what happens when you hurt people?’ Ammu said. ‘When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“I left proud, but with my spirit crushed.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Meek One

“Cheap heroism is always easy, and even to sacrifice life is easy too; because it is only a case of hot blood and an overflow of energy, and there is such a longing for what is beautiful! No, take the deed of heroism that is labourious, obscure, without noise or flourish, slandered, in which there is a great deal of sacrifice and not one grain of glory - in which you, a splendid man, are made to look like a scoundrel before every one, though you might be the most honest man in the world - you try that sort of heroism and you'll soon give it up! While I - have been bearing the burden of that all my life.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Gentle Spirit

“It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Those who do not weep, do not see.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“I am the wound and the blade, the torturer and the flayed.”
― Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil

“Kas ir stiprs, salauž stieņus. Kam nav spēka, tas ironizē par stieņiem. Kas ir stiprs, tas iznīcina būri. Kam nav spēka, tas rada būra filozofiju. Jo tikai tā var būrī dzīvot.”
― Alberts Bels, The Cage