Kade > Kade's Quotes

“To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

“They understood that the meaning of life is connected, inextricably, to the meaning of death; that mourning is a romance in reverse, and if you love, you grieve and there are no exceptions-- only those who do it well and those who don't. And if death is regarded as an embarrassment or an inconvenience, if the dead are regarded as a nuisance from whom we seek a hurried riddance, then life and the living are in for like treatment.”
― Thomas Lynch, The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade

“There are certain kinds of deaths that one should not be expected to relive, certain kinds of connections so deep that when they are broken you feel the snap of the link inside you.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“Our integrity sells for so little, but it is all that we really have. It is the very last inch of us. But within that inch, we are free... An inch; it is small, and it is fragile, and it is the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it or give it away; we must never let them take it from us.”
― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

“A circle looks at a square and sees a badly made circle.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Authority

“That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.”
― Howard Phillips Lovecraft, The Nameless City

“I remember one morning getting up at dawn. There was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling. And I... I remember thinking to myself: So this is the beginning of happiness, this is where it starts. And of course there will always be more...never occurred to me it wasn't the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment, right then.”
― Michael Cunningham, The Hours

“There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“Those of us in medicine don’t help, for we often regard the patient on the downhill as uninteresting unless he or she has a discrete problem we can fix.”
― Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

“To empathize with these patients, to put yourself in their shoes, may be a bit too existentially disconcerting. And so doctors unconsciously try to protect themselves by widening the moat between their own good health and their patients’ dauntingly mortal conditions”
― Danielle Ofri, What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

“Burnout also leads to a large swath of physicians who aren't as empathetic toward their patients as they could be.”
― Danielle Ofri, What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

“The artist is the creator of beautiful things.
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.
The critic is he who can translate into another
manner or a new material his impression of
beautiful things.

The highest as the lowest form of criticism
is a mode of autobiography.
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful
things are corrupt without being charming.
This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings
in beautiful things are the cultivated.
For these there is hope.
They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written.
That is all.

The nineteenth century dislike of
Realism is the rage of Caliban
seeing his own face in a glass.
The nineteenth century dislike of
Romanticism is the rage of Caliban
not seeing his own face in a glass.
The moral life of man forms part of the
subject-matter of the artist, but the morality
of art consists in the perfect use of an im-
perfect medium.
No artist desires to prove anything. Even
things that are true can be proved.
No artist has ethical sympathies. An
ethical sympathy in an artist is an un-
pardonable mannerism of style.
No artist is ever morbid. The artist
can express everything.
Thought and language are to the artist
instruments of an art.
Vice and virtue are to the artist materials
for an art.

From the point of view of form, the type of all
the arts is the art of the musician. From the
point of view of feeling, the actor’s craft is the
Type.

All art is at once surface and symbol.
Those who go beneath the surface do so at
their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at
their peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really
Mirrors.
Diversity of opinion about a work of art
shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.
When critics disagree, the artist is in accord
with himself.

We can forgive a man for making a useful
thing as long as he does not admire it. The
only excuse for making a useless thing is that
one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless.”
― Oscar Wilde., The Picture of Dorian Gray

“All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it.
The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless.”
― Oscar Wilde., The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming.
This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated.
For these there is hope.
They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.”
― Oscar Wilde., The Picture of Dorian Gray

“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written.
That is all.”
― Oscar Wilde.

“I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.”
― Oscar Wilde

“We want autonomy for ourselves and safety for those we love. That remains the main problem and paradox for the frail. Many of the things that we want for those we care about are things that we would adamantly oppose for ourselves because they would infringe upon our sense of self.”
― Atul Gawande

“Death is nothing to us. When we exist, death is not; and when death exists, we are not. All sensation and consciousness ends with death and therefore in death there is neither pleasure nor pain. The fear of death arises from the belief that in death, there is awareness.”
― Epicurus

“Much of what has been written about that moment homes in on the word “conscience.” Luther declared, “My conscience is captive to the Word of God.” He continued, “To go against conscience is neither safe nor right.”1 But so many historians have conflated our modern ideas about conscience with Luther’s very different ideas about it that we have accepted a deeply mistaken idea about what Luther meant, and therefore about what his stand at Worms meant. Of course Luther never said the English word “conscience”; that word is a translation from his German and Latin. The words he used, usually translated as “conscience,” cannot perfectly be translated as what we today mean by that word. The German word he used, Gewissen, really means “knowing.” And the Latin word, conscientia, means “with knowing.”
― Eric Metaxas, Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World

“When they finally did dare it, at first with stolen glances and then candid ones, they had to smile. They were uncommonly proud. For the first time they had done something out of Love.”
― Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

“Nature doesn’t know the concept of philosophy, Geralt of Rivia. The pathetic–ridiculous–attempts which people undertake to try to understand nature are typically termed philosophy. The results of such attempts are also considered philosophy. It’s as though a cabbage tried to investigate the causes and effects of its existence, called the result of these reflections “an eternal and mysterious conflict between head and root”, and considered rain an unfathomable causative power. We, sorcerers, don’t waste time puzzling out what nature is. We know what it is; for we are nature ourselves. Do you understand?’ ‘I’m trying to, but please talk more slowly. Don’t forget you’re talking to a cabbage.’ ‘Have”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, The Time of Contempt

“That's how the madness of the world tries to colonize you: from the outside in, forcing you to live in its reality.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“I had long ago stopped believing in promises. Biological imperatives, yes. Environmental factors, yes. Promises, no.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“I am just the biologist; I don’t require any of this to have a deeper meaning. I am aware that all of this speculation is incomplete, inexact, inaccurate, useless. If I don’t have real answers, it is because we still don’t know what questions to ask. Our instruments are useless, our methodology broken, our motivations selfish.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“for what was a map but a way of emphasizing some things and making other things invisible?”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“I think you’re confusing suicide with self-destruction, and they’re very different. Almost none of us commit suicide, whereas almost all of us self-destruct. Somehow. In some part of our lives. We drink, or take drugs, or destabilize the happy job”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

“Was I in the end stages of some prolonged form of annihilation?”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation