Azazel > Azazel's Quotes

“Omnia fui, nihil expedit....'I was all things; all was worthless”
― Lucius Septimus Severus Roman Emperor 193211

“I'd woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“A single sentence will suffice for modern man. He fornicated and read the papers. After that vigorous definition, the subject will be, if I may say so, exhausted.”
― Albert Camus, The Fall

“How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense",”
― Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis

“I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know.”
― Albert Camus, A Happy Death

“I think; therefore I am.”
― Rene Descartes

“Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“Don’t depend too much on anyone in this world because even your own shadow leaves you when you are in darkness.”
― Ibn Taymiyyah

“مَنْ لم يدرس المنطق، لا يُوثق بعلمه”
― أبو حامد الغزالي

“A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At teh end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever, " said the old lady. "But it turtles all the way down!”
― Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

“حمّل صاحب الخطيئة وزر خطيئته
وحمّل المعتدِيْ إثم اعتدائه
ولكن كن رحيماً في العقابِ لئلا يهلك ولا تهمله فيمعن في الشرّ”
― طه باقر, ملحمة كلكامش أوديسة العراق الخالدة

“Because there are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is the most excellent, the second is good, the third is useless.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“Einstein never accepted that the universe was governed by chance; his feelings were summed up in his famous statement “God does not play dice.”
― Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

“Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“I love life - that’s my real weakness. I love it so much that I am incapable of imagining what is not life.”
― Albert Camus, The Fall

“Today will still yearn to know why we are here and where we came from. Humanity's deepest desire for knowledge is justification enough for our continuing quest. And our goal is nothing less than a complete description of the universe we live in.”
― Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn't read all the time -- none, zero. You'd be amazed at how much Warren reads--and at how much I read. My children laugh at me. They think I'm a book with a couple of legs sticking out.”
― Charles T. Munger, Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger

“My third maxim was to endeavor always to conquer myself rather than fortune, and change my desires rather than the order of the world, and in general, accustom myself to the persuasion that, except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power; so that when we have done our best in things external to us, all wherein we fail of success is to be held, as regards us, absolutely impossible: and this single principle seemed to me sufficient to prevent me from desiring for the future anything which I could not obtain, and thus render me contented”
― René Descartes, Discourse on Method

“Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for every one thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess.”
― René Descartes, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences

“My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“If I write what I feel, it's to reduce the fever of feeling. What I confess is unimportant, because everything is unimportant.”
― Fernando Pessoa , The Book of Disquiet

“I don't mourn the loss of my childhood; I mourn because everything, including (my) childhood, is lost.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.”
― Fernando Pessoa

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“Thin, without fever, not cold, not warm, with empty eyes, without a shirt, the young man under the stuffed quilt heaves himself up, hangs around my throat and whispers in my ear, "Doctor, let me die.”
― Franz Kafka, A Country Doctor

“I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“Time is, time was, but time shall be no more.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“It pained him that he did not know well what politics meant and that he did not know where the universe ended. He felt small and weak. When would he be like the fellows in poetry and rhetoric? They had big voices and big boots and they studied trigonometry. That was very far away. First came the vacation and then the next term and then vacation again and then again another term and then again the vacation. It was like a train going in and out of tunnels and that was like the noise of the boys eating in the refectory when you opened and closed the flaps of the ears. Term, vacation; tunnel, out; noise, stop. How far away it was! It was better to go to bed to sleep. Only prayers in the chapel and then bed. He shivered and yawned. It would be lovely in bed after the sheets got a bit hot. First they were so cold to get into. He shivered to think how cold they were first. But then they got hot and then he could sleep. It was lovely to be tired. He yawned again. Night prayers and then bed: he shivered and wanted to yawn. It would be lovely in a few minutes. He felt a warm glow creeping up from the cold shivering sheets, warmer and warmer till he felt warm all over, ever so warm and yet he shivered a little and still wanted to yawn.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“The little Hexagon meditated on this a while and then said to me; "But you have been teaching me to raise numbers to the third power: I suppose three-to-the-third must mean something in Geometry; what does it mean?" "Nothing at all," replied I, "not at least in Geometry; for Geometry has only Two Dimensions." And then I began to shew the boy how a Point by moving through a length of three inches makes a Line of three inches, which may be represented by three; and how a Line of three inches, moving parallel to itself through a length of three inches, makes a Square of three inches every way, which may be represented by three-to-the-second. xxx Upon this, my Grandson, again returning to his former suggestion, took me up rather suddenly and exclaimed, "Well, then, if a Point by moving three inches, makes a Line of three inches represented by three; and if a straight Line of three inches, moving parallel to itself, makes a Square of three inches every way, represented by three-to-the-second; it must be that a Square of three inches every way, moving somehow parallel to itself (but I don't see how) must make Something else (but I don't see what) of three inches every way—and this must be represented by three-to-the-third."

"Go to bed," said I, a little ruffled by this interruption: "if you would talk less nonsense, you would remember more sense.”
― Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

“Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray