Khalil Bowie > Khalil's Quotes

“Her clothes were filled with safety pins and hidden tears.”
― Louise Erdrich, Love Medicine

“What if depression – reason’s failure to achieve self-mastery – is not the failure of reason but instead the result of reason? What if human reason works “too well,” and brings us to conclusions that are anathema to the existence of human beings? What we would have is a “cold rationalism,” shoring up the anthropocentric conceits of the philosophical endeavor, showing us an anonymous, faceless world impervious to our hopes and desires.”
― Eugene Thacker

“She wondered what he looked like with his hat off and wondered again if he knew he was funny.”
― Elmore Leonard, Pronto

“Look in the mirror. See that bad ass bitch? That's the only person you should ever worry about.”
― Shayla Nico

“If you're trapped in the dream of the Other, you're fucked.”
― Gilles Deleuze

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
― Mark Twain

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
― Mark Twain

“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

“ لا ينبغي أن نخجل من أمر فرض علينا ، مهما كان ، ما دمنا لم نقترفه ”
― يوسف زيدان, عزازيل

“There is no fate which cannot be surmounted by scorn.”
― Albert Camus

“A man finds himself, to his great astonishment, suddenly existing, after thousands and thousands of years of non-existence: he lives for a little while; and then, again, comes an equally long period when he must exist no more. The heart rebels against this, and feels that it cannot be true.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Tell me," Wittgenstein's asked a friend, "why do people always say, it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth was rotating?" His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth." Wittgenstein replied, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“In history, good intentions do not always make good consequences”
― Alija Izetbegović, Inescapable Questions

“To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities—I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not—that one endures.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

“Here is a lesson in creative writing.

First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

And I realize some of you may be having trouble deciding whether I am kidding or not. So from now on I will tell you when I'm kidding.

For instance, join the National Guard or the Marines and teach democracy. I'm kidding.

We are about to be attacked by Al Qaeda. Wave flags if you have them. That always seems to scare them away. I'm kidding.

If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“She believed in nothing. Only her scepticism kept her from being an atheist.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“غدَوتَ مريضَ العقلِ والدّينِ فالقَني لتسمعَ أنباءَ الأمورِ الصحائحِ
فلا تأكُلْن ما أخرجَ الماء، ظالماً، ولا تبغِ قوتاً من غريض الذّبائحِ
وأبيَضَ أُمّاتٍ، أرادتْ صريحَه لأطفالها، دون الغواني الصّرائح
ولا تفجَعَنّ الطّيرَ، وهيَ غوافلٌ، بما وضعتْ، فالظّلمُ شرُّ القبائح
ودعْ ضرَبَ النّحل، الذي بكَرت له، كواسِبَ منْ أزهارِ نبتٍ فوائح
فما أحرزَته كي يكونَ لغيرِها، ولا جمَعَتْهُ للنّدى والمنائح
مسحْتُ يدي من كلّ هذا، فليتني أبَهْتُ لشأني، قبل شيب المسائح
بَني زمني، هل تعلمون سرائراً، علمتُ، ولكني بها غيرُ بائح؟
سريتمْ على غَيٍّ، فهلاّ اهتدَيتمُ بما خيّرَتْكُمْ صافياتُ القرائح
وصاحَ بكم داعي الضّلال، فما لكم أجَبتمْ، على ما خيّلتْ، كلَّ صائح؟”
― أبو العلاء المعري

“Every consciousness pursues the death of the other.”
― Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich

“Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think. ”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Know yourselves- be infertile and let the earth be silent after ye.”
― Peter Wessel Zapffe, Essays

“The poem no longer transcended reality.”
― Jean Améry

“Rien n'arrive ni comme on l'espère, ni comme on le craint', dice Proust en algún pasaje de su obra. Nada, en efecto, sucede como lo esperamos ni como lo tememos.”
― Jean Améry, Más allá de la culpa y la expiación. Tentativas de superación de una víctima de una violencia.

“I am true only as I see and understand myself deep within; I am what I am for myself and in myself, and nothing else.”
― Jean Améry, At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities

“Life ... is a burden. The day about to begin is an oppressive weight.... The erect penis is heavy, even heavier the hanging one. Even the most tender breast has to be dragged along.”
― Jean Améry, On Suicide: A Discourse on Voluntary Death

“Alas," said the mouse, "the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into."
"You only need to change your direction," said the cat, and ate it up.”
― Franz Kafka

“If you can't tell the difference between the extermination of a people and the use of a concept, you're an imbecile.”
― Ray Brassier

“اكتشف السيميائيون أثناء بحثهم عن الذهب كثيراً من الأشياء الأكثر نفعا.”
― أرثر شوبنهاور

“Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will.”
― Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays

“One should always be drunk. That's all that matters...But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you chose. But get drunk.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen