J > J's Quotes

“Der Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will.

Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

“The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.”
― Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes

“Besides we are men, and after all it is our business to risk our lives.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers

“In man's struggle against the world, bet on the world.”
― Franz Kafka

“History is idle gossip about a happening whose truth is lost the instant it has taken place.”
― Gore Vidal, Julian

“There is more scholarly work on the life-habits of the dung fly than on existential risks [to humanity].”
― Nick Bostrom

“Maybe I can quit drinking one of these days. They all say that, don't they?"
"It takes about three years."
"Three years?" He looked shocked. "Usually it does. It's a different world. You have to get used to a paler set of colors, a quieter lot of sounds. You have to allow for relapses. All the people you used to know well will get to be just a little strange. You won't even like most of them, and they won't like you too well.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“Be sure not to discuss your hero's state of mind. Make it clear from his actions."

(Letter to Alexander Chekhov, May 10, 1886)”
― Anton Chekhov

“Never do anything yourself that others can do for you.”
― Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules

“New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not common.”
― John Locke

“To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.”
― Hermann Hesse

“the world is my idea”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others.”
― Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“He who has talent in him must be purer in soul than anyone else. Another will be forgiven much, but to him it will not be forgiven. A man who leaves the house in bright, festive clothes needs only one drop of mud splashed from under a wheel, and people all surround him, point their fingers at him, and talk about his slovenliness, while the same people ignore many spots on other passers-by who are wearing everyday clothes. For on everyday clothes the spots do not show.”
― Nikolai Gogol, The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol

“Are your convictions so fragile that mine cannot stand in opposition to them? Is your God so illusory that the presence of my Devil reveals his insufficiency?”
― Doug Wright, Quills

“People go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern: to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine themselves, for a few minutes anyway, free and happy.
-- Circular Letter to My Friends in Italy”
― Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin

“Doubt is the origin of wisdom”
― Rene Descartes

“Will future ages believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!”
― Sir Walter Scott

“Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.”
― Niccolo Machiavelli

“Moderation, we find, is an extremely difficult thing to get in this country.”
― Flann O'Brien, The Best of Myles

“A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.”
― Francis Bacon, The Essays

“The funniest people are the saddest ones”
― Confucius

“I despised my arrival on this earth and I despise my departure; it is a tragedy.”
― Avicenna, A Compendiun On The Soul

“What they wanted from a hog was all the profits that could be got out of him; and that was what they wanted from the workingman, and also that was what they wanted from the public. What the hog thought of it, and what he suffered, were not considered; and no more was it with labor, and no more with the purchaser of meat.”
― Upton Sinclair

“All universal moral principles are idle fancies.”
― Marquis de Sade

“Such a caring for death, an awakening that keeps vigil over death, a conscience that looks death in the face, is another name for freedom.”
― Jacques Derrida

“Let's say it once and for all: Poe and Lovecraft - not to mention a Bruno Schulz or a Franz Kafka - were what the world at large would consider extremely disturbed individuals. And most people who are that disturbed are not able to create works of fiction. These and other names I could mention are people who are just on the cusp of total psychological derangement. Sometimes they cross over and fall into the province of 'outsider artists.' That's where the future development of horror fiction lies - in the next person who is almost too emotionally and psychologically damaged to live in the world but not too damaged to produce fiction.”
― Thomas Ligotti

“God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I am suspicious of all the things that the average people believes.”
― H.L. Mencken