Marek N > Marek's Quotes

“Either way, he figured a cup of coffee would hit the spot. For what is more versatile? As at home in tin as it is in Limoges, coffee can energize the industrious at dawn, calm the reflective at noon, or raise the spirits of the beleagured in the middle of the night.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“After all, what can a first impression tell us about someone we’ve just met for a minute in the lobby of a hotel? For that matter, what can a first impression tell us about anyone? Why, no more than a chord can tell us about Beethoven, or a brushstroke about Botticelli. By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration—and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“Love is like a tree: it grows by itself, roots itself deeply in our being and continues to flourish over a heart in ruin. The inexplicable fact is that the blinder it is, the more tenacious it is. It is never stronger than when it is completely unreasonable.”
― Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

“Why, there's the air, the sky, the morning, the evening, moonlight, my friends, women, the beautiful architecture of Paris to study, three big books to write and all sorts of other things. Anaxagoras used to say that he was in the world in order to admire the sun. And then I have the good fortune to be able to spend my days from morning to night in the company of a man of genius - myself - and it's very pleasant.”
― Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

“I'd rather be the head of a fly than the tail of a lion.”
― Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

“Sublime is the dominion of the mind over the body, that, for a time, can make flesh and nerve impregnable, and string the sinews like steel, so that the weak become so mighty.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin

“I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.”
― Richard Dawkins

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point… The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“A child is not a Christian child, not a Muslim child, but a child of Christian parents or a child of Muslim parents. This latter nomenclature, by the way, would be an excellent piece of consciousness-raising for the children themselves. A child who is told she is a 'child of Muslim parents' will immediately realize that religion is something for her to choose -or reject- when she becomes old enough to do so.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“Let children learn about different faiths, let them notice their incompatibility, and let them draw their own conclusions about the consequences of that incompatibility. As for whether they are ‘valid,’ let them make up their own minds when they are old enough to do so.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think for themselves, how to evaluate evidence, and how to disagree with you.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one.”
― Richard Dawkins

“Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? That's not morality, that's just sucking up, apple-polishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky, or the still small wiretap inside your head, monitoring your every move, even your every base though.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and 'improved' by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“Faith can be very very dangerous, and deliberately to implant it into the vulnerable mind of an innocent child is a grievous wrong.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.”
― Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

“Creationists eagerly seek a gap in present-day knowledge or understanding. If an apparent gap is found, it is assumed that God, by default, must fill it.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“The truly adult view [...] is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it. And we can make it very wonderful indeed.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.”
― Seneca

“There is in every village a torch - the teacher; and an extinguisher - the priest.”
― Victor Hugo

“the Count had restricted himself to two succinct pieces of parental advice. The first was that if one did not master one’s circumstances, one was bound to be mastered by them; and the second was Montaigne’s maxim that the surest sign of wisdom is constant cheerfulness.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow