Tom > Tom's Quotes

“There is no story that is not true, [...] The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.”
― Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart

“One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.”
― Jane Austen, Emma

“The years go by, and I've told the story so many times that I'm not sure anymore whether I actually remember it or whether I just remember the words I tell it with.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory

“Tous les matins du monde sont sans retour.”
― Pascal Quignard, Tous les matins du monde

“Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content. No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of the spring: no man can, at the same time, fill his cup from the source and from the mouth of the Nile.”
― Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

“Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“Niets bestaat dat niet iets anders aanraakt.”
― Jeroen Brouwers, Bezonken rood

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“Why do men like me want sons?" he wondered. "It must be because they hope in their poor beaten souls that these new men, who are their blood, will do the things they were not strong enough nor wise enough nor brave enough to do. It is rather like another chance at life; like a new bag of coins at a table of luck after your fortune is gone.”
― John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold

“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.”
― Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa , The Leopard

“Doen alsof' iets niet is wat het is, maar 'iets anders' misschien zijn mensen die dat kunnen 'gelukkig', rustig en zonder angst.”
― Jeroen Brouwers, Bezonken rood

“Like a Dog!”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“As your lover describes you, so you are.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry

“I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are good people and bad people. You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“It was... the Great White God de-throned, I suppose. Because we did, we quite unselfconsciously assumed we were the measure of all things. That was how we approached them. And suddenly I saw that we weren't the measure of all things, but that there was no measure.”
― Pat Barker, Regeneration

“Already there are too many books in the world. There are more every day. One man cannot hope to read them all.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“With age I have voluntarily chosen certain limitations. I don't have the energy to start over again. To learn new skills or fight my own personality or figure out diesel engines.”
― Peter Høeg, Smilla's Sense of Snow

“How can a man follow the Way or the Great Game when he is eternally pestered by women? There was that girl at the Akrola by the Ford; and there was the scullion's wife behind the dovecote -- not counting the others -- and now comes this one! When I was a child it was well enough, but now I am a man and they will not regard me as a man. Walnuts indeed! Ho! Ho! It is almonds in the Plains!”
― Rudyard Kipling, Kim

“I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“I don't make myself disagreeable; it is you who find me so. Disagreeable is a word that describes your feelings and not my actions.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”
― Omar Khayyám

“Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact.”
― Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

“We rest; A dream has power to poison sleep.
We rise; One wandering thought pollutes the day.
We feel, conceive, or reason; laugh or weep,
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away;
It is the same: for, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of departure still is free.
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but mutability!”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

“Where there is personality, there is discord.”
― Terry Pratchett

“Again it might have been the American tendency in travel. One goes, not so much to see but to tell afterward.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“The ancients placed love and war in the hands of closely related gods.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“A question is a trap and an answer is your foot in it.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“I am happy to report that in the war between reality and romance, reality is not the stronger.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“People whose wishes get granted often don't turn out to be very nice people.”
― Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad