MadBrain > MadBrain's Quotes

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

“I don't believe anything, but I have many suspicions.”
― Robert Anton Wilson

“It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”
― Philip K. Dick, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon

“You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“If you think this Universe is bad, you should see some of the others.”
― Philip K. Dick

“Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I'm one of them.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

“Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

“Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the “normal people” as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like “Have a nice day” and “Weather’s awful today, eh?”, you yearn inside to say forbidden things like “Tell me something that makes you cry” or “What do you think deja vu is for?”. Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others…”
― Timothy Leary

“The limits of my language means the limits of my world.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“Have you never thought how danger must surround power as shadow does light? This sorcery is not a game we play for pleasure or for praise. Think of this: that every work, every act of our Art is said and is done either for good, or for evil.
Before you speak or do you must know the price that is to pay!”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“Altri si vantino dei libri che hanno scritto, io mi glorio di quelli che ho letto.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“As it says in the Bible, God fights on the side with the heaviest artillery.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

“Your library is your paradise.”
― Desiderius Erasmus

“Libraries raised me.”
― Ray Bradbury

“high on top of the world our noses sniffling like the noses of little boys playing late Saturday afternoon their final games in winter”
― Kerouac, Jack

“Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away ere break of day
To seek the pale enchanted gold.

The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,
While hammers fell like ringing bells
In places deep, where dark things sleep,
In hollow halls beneath the fells.

For ancient king and elvish lord
There many a gleaming golden hoard
They shaped and wrought, and light they caught
To hide in gems on hilt of sword.

On silver necklaces they strung
The flowering stars, on crowns they hung
The dragon-fire, in twisted wire
They meshed the light of moon and sun.

Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away, ere break of day,
To claim our long-forgotten gold.

Goblets they carved there for themselves
And harps of gold; where no man delves
There lay they long, and many a song
Was sung unheard by men or elves.

The pines were roaring on the height,
The wind was moaning in the night.
The fire was red, it flaming spread;
The trees like torches blazed with light.

The bells were ringing in the dale
And men looked up with faces pale;
The dragon's ire more fierce than fire
Laid low their towers and houses frail.

The mountain smoked beneath the moon;
The dwarves, they heard the tramp of doom.
They fled their hall to dying fall
Beneath his feet, beneath the moon.

Far over the misty mountains grim
To dungeons deep and caverns dim
We must away, ere break of day,
To win our harps and gold from him!”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again

“When the sun of culture is low, even dwarves will cast long shadows”
― Karl Kraus

“Like as the birds that gather in the trees of afternoon,' wrote Ashvhaghosha almost two thousand years ago, 'then at nightfall vanish all away, so are the separations of the world.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
― T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.”
― Richard P. Feynman

“Cynicism is a great cure for over-study.
There is a great deal of cynicism in this book, in one place and another. It should be regarded as Angostura Bitters, to brighten the flavour of a discourse which were else too sweet. It prevents one from slopping over into sentimentality.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Book of Lies

“The chess-board is the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.”
― Thomas Henry Huxley

“I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“But the delight of Earth, the wonder of it; the essential feeling as of the necessity for magic; that juggling with the golden moon and silver sun (such are they) that is man's universal pastime: these are the things to seek in the Kalevala. All the world to wheel about in, the Great Bear to play with and Orion and the Seven Stars all dangling magically in the branches of a silver birch enchanted by Väinämöinen; the splendid sorcerous scandalous villains of old to tell of when you have bathed in the 'Sauna' after binding the kine at close of day into pastures of little Suomi in the Marshes.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Story of Kullervo

“[...] the great Rule of the Game in the Kalevala which is to tell at least three lies before imparting any accurate information however trivial. It had become I think
a kind of formula of polite behaviour, for no one seems to believe you until your fourth statement (which you modestly preface with 'all the truth I now will tell you,
though at first I lied a little'.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Story of Kullervo

“Ma è un fatto d'esperienza che esiste un'attività psichica preconscia, cui corrispondono fattori autonomi, precisamente gli archetipi. Se si giunge a riconoscere che le voci e le idee deliranti di un malato di mente sono autonome, che le fobie e le ossessioni di un neurotico sono sottratte alla sua ragione e alla sua volontà, che l'Io non può fabbricare ad arbitrio nessun sogno, ma che sogna semplicemente quel che deve, allora si può anche capire che prima furono gli dei e poi la teologia. Anzi, si deve fare apertamente ancora un passo, e ammettere che prima ci fu una figura luminosa e una crepuscolare, e soltanto in seguito una chiarezza della coscienza, che si liberò dalla notte e dal suo incerto lume stellare.
{Lo Spirito Mercurio}”
― C.G. Jung