Alivia > Alivia's Quotes

“We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged”
― Heinrich Heine

“Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.”
― Heinrich Heine

“Mine is a most peaceable disposition. My wishes are: a humble cottage with a thatched roof, but a good bed, good food, the freshest milk and butter, flowers before my window, and a few fine trees before my door; and if God wants to make my happiness complete, he will grant me the joy of seeing some six or seven of my enemies hanging from those trees. Before death I shall, moved in my heart, forgive them all the wrong they did me in their lifetime. One must, it is true, forgive one's enemies-- but not before they have been hanged.”
― Heinrich Heine

“Das war ein Vorspiel nur; dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen."

(Almansor)”
― Heinrich Heine, Gesammelte Werke

“The German Censors —— —— —— —— ——
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― Heinrich Heine, Ideen

“Her delight in the smallest things was like that of a child. There were days when she ran in the garden, like a child of ten, after a butterfly or a dragon-fly. This courtesan who had cost more money in bouquets than would have kept a whole family in comfort, would sometimes sit on the grass for an hour, examining the simple flower whose name she bore.”
― Alexandre Dumas-fils, La Dame aux Camélias

“How one realizes the shortness of life by the rapidity of sensations! I have only known Marguerite for two days, she has only been my mistress since yesterday, and she has already so completely absorbed my thoughts, my heart, and my life.”
― Alexandre Dumas-fils, La dame aux camélias

“To be loved by a pure young girl, to be the first to reveal to her the strange mystery of love, is indeed a great happiness, but it is the simplest thing in the world. To take captive a heart which has had no experience of attack, is to enter an unfortified and ungarrisoned city. Education, family feeling, the sense of duty, the family, are strong sentinels, but there are no sentinels so vigilant as not to be deceived by a girl of sixteen to whom nature, by the voice of the man she loves, gives the first counsels of love, all the more ardent because they seem so pure.
The more a girl believes in goodness, the more easily will she give way, if not to her lover, at least to love, for being without mistrust she is without force, and to win her love is a triumph that can be gained by any young man of five-and-twenty. See how young girls are watched and guarded! The walls of convents are not high enough, mothers have no locks strong enough, religion has no duties constant enough, to shut these charming birds in their cages, cages not even strewn with flowers. Then how surely must they desire the world which is hidden from them, how surely must they find it tempting, how surely must they listen to the first voice which comes to tell its secrets through their bars, and bless the hand which is the first to raise a corner of the mysterious veil!
But to be really loved by a courtesan: that is a victory of infinitely greater difficulty. With them the body has worn out the soul, the senses have burned up the heart, dissipation has blunted the feelings. They have long known the words that we say to them, the means we use; they have sold the love that they inspire. They love by profession, and not by instinct. They are guarded better by their calculations than a virgin by her mother and her convent; and they have invented the word caprice for that unbartered love which they allow themselves from time to time, for a rest, for an excuse, for a consolation, like usurers, who cheat a thousand, and think they have bought their own redemption by once lending a sovereign to a poor devil who is dying of hunger without asking for interest or a receipt.
Then, when God allows love to a courtesan, that love, which at first seems like a pardon, becomes for her almost without penitence. When a creature who has all her past to reproach herself with is taken all at once by a profound, sincere, irresistible love, of which she had never felt herself capable; when she has confessed her love, how absolutely the man whom she loves dominates her! How strong he feels with his cruel right to say: You do no more for love than you have done for money. They know not what proof to give. A child, says the fable, having often amused himself by crying "Help! a wolf!" in order to disturb the labourers in the field, was one day devoured by a Wolf, because those whom he had so often deceived no longer believed in his cries for help. It is the same with these unhappy women when they love seriously. They have lied so often that no one will believe them, and in the midst of their remorse they are devoured by their love.”
― Alexandre Dumas, La dame aux camélias

“People have always associated the country with love, and they have done well; nothing affords so fine a frame for the woman whom one loves as the blue sky, the odours, the flowers, the breeze, the shining solitude of fields, or woods. However much one loves a woman, whatever confidence one may have in her, whatever certainty her past may offer us as to her future, one is always more or less jealous. If you have been in love, you must have felt the need of isolating from this world the being in whom you would live wholly.”
― Alexandre Dumas fils, La dame aux camélias

“Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire-side and his quiet home!”
― Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

“Ode to an Expiring Frog

Can I view thee panting, lying
On thy stomach, without sighing!
Can I unmoved see thee dying
On a log,
Expiring frog!

Say, have fiends in shape of boys,
With wild halloo and brutal noise,
Hunted thee from marshy joys,
With a dog,
Expiring frog?”
― Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

“Mr. Pickwick gazed through his spectacles for an instant on the advancing mass, and then fairly turned his back and -- we will not say fled; firstly because it is an ignoble term, and, secondly, because Mr. Pickwick's figure was by no means adapted for that mode of retreat...”
― Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

“Hush. Don't ask any questions. It's always best on these occasions to do what the mob do."
"But suppose there are two mobs?" suggested Mr. Snodgrass.
"Shout with the largest," replied Mr. Pickwick.
Volumes could not have said more.”
― Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

“The gout is a complaint as arises from too much ease and comfort. If ever you're attacked with the gout, sir, jist you marry a widder as has got a good loud woice, with a decent notion of usin' it, and you'll never have the gout agin.... I can warrant it to drive away any illness as is caused by too much jollity.”
― Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

“Women, after all, gentlemen,' said the enthusiastic Mr. Snodgrass, 'are the great props and comforts of our existance.”
― Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

“you'll find that as you get vider, you'll get viser. Vidth and visdom, Sammy, alvays grows together.”
― Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

“What kind of idea are you? Are you the kind that compromises, does deals, accomodates itself to society, aims to find a niche, to survive; or are you the cussed, bloody-minded, ramrod-backed type of damnfool notion that would rather break than sway with the breeze? – The kind that will almost certainly, ninety-nine times out of hundred, be smashed to bits; but, the hundredth time, will change the world.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

“Not all possibilities are open to us. The world is finite; our hopes spill over its rim.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

“Question: What is the opposite of faith?

Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself is a kind of belief.

Doubt.

The human condition, but what of the angelic? Halfway between Allahgod and homosap, did they ever doubt? They did: challenging God's will one day they hid muttering beneath the Throne, daring to ask forbidden things: antiquestions. Is it right that. Could it not be argued. Freedom, the old antiquest. He calmed them down, naturally, employing management skills a la god. Flattered them: you will be the instruments of my will on earth, the salvationdamnation of man, all the usual etcetera. And hey presto, the end of protest, on with the haloes, back to work. Angels are easily pacified; turn them into instruments and they'll play your harpy tune. Human beings are tougher nuts, can doubt anything, even the evidence of their own eyes. Of behing-their-own-eyes. Of what, as they sink heavy-lidded, transpires behind closed peepers ... angels, they don't have much in the way of a will. To will is to disagree; not to submit; to dissent.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

“Cats don't drink cocktails,' I said.

'Cats don't shoot lasers from their eyes, either, but here we are, Carl. Mama needs a night off.”
― Matt Dinniman, Carl's Doomsday Scenario

“If it used to be okay, but it’s not okay anymore, then maybe you should do something about it. Don’t compare your circumstances with how they were yesterday. Look at how they were years ago. We’re supposed to be making the world… the universe… a better place for our children. If it’s not better, if you’re dealing with cruelty, with neglect, then you should do something about it. So, yeah. Fuck ‘em. Fuck King Rust and his asshole child. If you’re unhappy with your government, then kick them out and set up your own, one that represents the people’s best interests. You shouldn’t have to put up with some loser who’s going to take the people’s money and waste it on games, especially when those games entail killing people weaker than him with little or no real danger to himself. What a pussy. That’s my opinion.”
― Matt Dinniman, Carl's Doomsday Scenario

“Mongo is appalled.”
― Matt Dinniman, Carl's Doomsday Scenario

“Don’t compare your circumstances with how they were yesterday. Look at how they were years ago.”
― Matt Dinniman, Carl's Doomsday Scenario

“So help me god,” I said. “I will abandon you right here and right now if you choose to take up the kazoo.”
― Matt Dinniman, Carl's Doomsday Scenario

“If that’s true,” I said, “then you’re all in that same pot.” I turned to look at the audience. “All of you. If a government is afraid of what its people say, then maybe there’s a reason for it.”
― Matt Dinniman, Carl's Doomsday Scenario

“They were all gone. All I had left in this world was right here. Mongo soon started to snore. I could feel Donut’s warmth against the back of my neck. She breathed softly, oblivious of all that had occurred tonight. This, I thought, this is my family.”
― Matt Dinniman, Carl's Doomsday Scenario

“Carl?” she asked. I looked down into her large, glowing eyes. “Yeah?” “I’m not as dumb as I pretend to be. I know she’s dead.” “I know.” I wrapped myself around her. We both closed our eyes and braced for the end.”
― Matt Dinniman, Carl's Doomsday Scenario

“All it takes is a little seed, my mom had said that day as we planted the trees. Just little seeds here and there, and soon enough you have a forest.”
― Matt Dinniman, Carl's Doomsday Scenario