Victoria > Victoria's Quotes

“What sphinx of cement and aluminium bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?

- Howl”
― Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems

“People who get up early in the morning cause war, death and famine.”
― Banksy, Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall

“A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

“The greatest pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him, and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself, too.”
― Samuel Butler

“In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag.”
― W. H. Auden

“I still think it's important for people to have a sharp, ongoing critique of marriage in patriarchal society — because once you marry within a society that remains patriarchal, no matter how alternative you want to be within your unit, there is still a culture outside you that will impose many, many values on you whether you want them to or not. ”
― Bell Hooks

“Repetita iuvant. Italy, a land of great saints, poets, sailors, artists, statesmen, businessmen, lawyers, intellectuals, professors, journalists, whores, gangsters, religious parasites and dickheads.”
― Carl William Brown, L'Italia in breve.

“there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock.

people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other
one on one.

the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners.

it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone

untouched
unspoken to

watering a plant.”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
― Walt Whitman

“I have had my dance with Folly, nor do I shirk the blame;
I have sipped the so-called Wine of Life and paid the price of shame;
But I know that I shall find surcease, the rest my spirit craves,
Where the rainbows play in the flying spray,
'Mid the keen salt kiss of the waves.”
― Eugene O'Neill

“It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.”
― Emil Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

“Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die?”
― Emil Cioran

“I don’t understand why we must do things in this world, why we must have friends and aspirations, hopes and dreams. Wouldn’t it be better to retreat to a faraway corner of the world, where all its noise and complications would be heard no more? Then we could renounce culture and ambitions; we would lose everything and gain nothing; for what is there to be gained from this world?”
― Emil Cioran, On the Heights of Despair

“Man starts over again everyday, in spite of all he knows, against all he knows.”
― Emil Cioran

“What do you do from morning to night?"

"I endure myself.”
― Emil Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

“The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live --moreover, the only one.”
― E. M. Cioran

“As far as I am concerned, I resign from humanity. I no longer want to be, nor can still be, a man. What should I do? Work for a social and political system, make a girl miserable? Hunt for weaknesses in philosophical systems, fight for moral and esthetic ideals? It’s all too little. I renounce my humanity even though I may find myself alone. But am I not already alone in this world from which I no longer expect anything?”
― Emil Cioran, On the Heights of Despair

“Is it possible that existence is our exile and nothingness our home?”
― Emil Cioran, Tears and Saints

“Only those moments count, when the desire to remain by yourself is so powerful that you'd prefer to blow your brains out than exchange a word with someone.”
― Émile Michel Cioran, The New Gods

“Melancholy: an appetite no misery satisfies.”
― Emil Cioran, All Gall is Divided: Aphorisms

“If I were to be totally sincere, I would say that I do not know why I live and why I do not stop living. The answer probably lies in the irrational character of life which maintains itself without reason.”
― Emil Cioran, On the Heights of Despair

“If we could truly see ourselves the way others see us we'd disappear on the spot.”
― Émile Michel Cioran

“True confessions are written with tears only. But my tears would drown the world, as my inner fire would reduce it to ashes.”
― Emil Cioran, On the Heights of Despair

“How important can it be that I suffer and think? My presence in this world will disturb a few tranquil lives and will unsettle the unconscious and pleasant naiveté of others. Although I feel that my tragedy is the greatest in history—greater than the fall of empires—I am nevertheless aware of my total insignificance. I am absolutely persuaded that I am nothing in this universe; yet I feel that mine is the only real existence.”
― Emil Cioran, On the Heights of Despair

“To live entirely without a goal! I have glimpsed this state, and have often attained it, without managing to remain there: I am too weak for such happiness.”
― Émile Michel Cioran

“The same feeling of not belonging, of futility, wherever I go: I pretend interest in what matters nothing to me, I bestir myself mechanically or out of charity, without ever being caught up, without ever being somewhere. What attracts me is elsewhere, and I don’t know where that elsewhere is.”
― Emil M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

“The multiplication of our kind borders on the obscene; the duty to love them, on the preposterous.”
― Emil Cioran

“أشعر أنني منفصل تماما عن كل البلدان وعن كل المجموعات. أنا متشرد
ميتافيزيقي

I feel completely detached from any country, any group.
I am a metaphysically displaced person”
― Emil Cioran

“In every man sleeps a prophet, and when he wakes there is a little more evil in the world.”
― Emil Cioran

“Only those are happy who never think or, rather, who only think about life's bare necessities, and to think about such things means not to think at all. True thinking resembles a demon who muddies the spring of life or a sickness which corrupts its roots. To think all the time, to raise questions, to doubt your own destiny, to feel the weariness of living, to be worn out to the point of exhaustion by thoughts and life, to leave behind you, as symbols of your life's drama, a trail of smoke and blood - all this means you are so unhappy that reflection and thinking appear as a curse causing a violent revulsion in you.”
― Emil Cioran, On the Heights of Despair