letix > letix's Quotes

“I don't like it, but my hands are tied. I just want you to know this: if I ever get the chance to betray you, I will. If the opportunity arises to pay you back, I'll take it. You'll never be able to trust me.”
― Darren Shan, Cirque du Freak: A Living Nightmare

“I don’t know how to be silent when my heart is speaking.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

“But how could you live and have no story to tell?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights

“I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

“To care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it’s good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

“Oh, gentlemen, do you know, perhaps I consider myself an intelligent man, only because all my life I have been able neither to begin nor to finish anything. Granted I am a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground

“Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness.

Everything passes.

That is the one and only thing that I have thought resembled a truth in the society of human beings where I have dwelled up to now as in a burning hell.

Everything passes.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“I am convinced that human life is filled with many pure, happy, serene examples of insincerity, truly splendid of their kind-of people deceiving one another without (strangely enough) any wounds being inflicted, of people who seem unaware even that they are deceiving one another.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“Whenever I was asked what I wanted my first impulse was to answer "Nothing." The thought went through my mind that it didn't make any difference, that nothing was going to make me happy.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“For someone like myself in whom the ability to trust others is so cracked and broken that I am wretchedly timid and am forever trying to read the expression on people's faces.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“What did he mean by "society"? The plural of human beings?”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“Unhappiness. There are all kinds of unhappy people in the world. I suppose it would be no exaggeration to say that the world is composed entirely of unhappy people. But those people can fight their unhappiness with society fairly and squarly, and society for its part easily understands and sympathizes with such struggles. My unhappiness stemmed entirely from my own vices, and I had no way of fighting anybody.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“The thought of dying has never bothered me, but getting hurt, losing blood, becoming crippled and the like—no thanks.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“What, I wondered, did he mean by “society”? The plural of human beings? Where was the substance of this thing called “society”? I had spent my whole life thinkng that society must certainly be something powerful, harsh and severe, but to hear Horiki talk made the words “Don’t you mean yourself?” come to the tip of my tongue. But I held the words back, reluctant to anger him.
‘Society won’t stand for it.’
‘It’s not society. You’re the one who won’t stand for it - right?’
‘If you do such a thing society will make you suffer for it’
‘It’s not society. It’s you, isn’t it?’
‘Before you know it, you’ll be ostracized by society.’
‘It’s not society. You’re going to do the ostracizing, aren’t you?’
Words, words of every kind went flitting through my head. “Know thy particular fearsomeness, thy knavery, cunning and witchcraft!” What I said, however, as I wiped the perspiration from my face with a handkerchief was merely, “You’ve put me in a cold sweat!” I smiled.
From then on, however, I came to hold, almost as a philosophical conviction, the belief: What is society but an individual?”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“Genius hesitates.”
― Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

“In his youth Albert Einstein spent a year loafing aimlessly. You don't get anywhere by not 'wasting' time- something, unfortunately, that the parents of teenagers tend frequently to forget.”
― Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

“Once again, the world seems to be less about objects than about interactive relationships.”
― Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

“We are made of the same stardust of which all things are made, and when we are immersed in suffering or when we are experiencing intense joy we are being nothing other than what we can’t help but be: a part of our world.”
― Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

“Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

“But man is not made for defeat," he said. "A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

“Now is no time to think of what you do not have.
Think of what you can do with that there is”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

“Let him think that I am more man than I am and I will be so.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

“You know, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t reduce it to the freshman level. That means we really don’t understand it.”
― Richard Feynman, Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher

“We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules.”
― Richard Feynman, Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher

“The power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.” (Gibbon)”
― Richard Feynman, Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher

“Words can be meaningless. If they are used in such a way that no sharp conclusions can be drawn.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist

“But who will dare to speak the truth out clear?
The few who anything of truth have learned,
And foolishly did not keep truth concealed,
Their thoughts and visions to the common herd revealed,
Since time began we've crucified and burned”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, and the Urfaust

“If I wasn't a devil myself I'd give
Me up to the Devil this very minute.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust

“Though the ear choose not to hear,
In the heart I echo,clear:
Always found, and never sought,
Praised, as well as cursed, in thought.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust

“Family is not whose blood runs in your veins, it's who you'd spill it for.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone