Zac > Zac's Quotes

“IN THE END… We only regret the chances we didn’t take, the relationships we were afraid to have,and the decisions we waited too long to make.”
― Lewis Carroll

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”
― St. Augustine

“A whole Gothic world had come to grief...there was now no armour glittering through the forest glades, no embroidered feet on the green sward; the cream and dappled unicorns had fled...”
― Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust

“Death is the mother of beauty,” said Henry. “And what is beauty?” “Terror.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; vagabond-language scrawled on gate-posts and paving-stones along the weary road that others have tramped before us; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

“I am not a man of my time. In fact I find it hard not to declare myself its enemy. Not, as I often remark, that I fail to understand it. My comment is merely a pious one. Because I am easy-going I prefer not to be aggressive or hostile and therefore I say that I do not understand those matters which I ought to say I hate or despise. I have sharp ears but I pretend to be hard of hearing, finding as I do that is more elegant to feign this handicap than to admit that I have heard some vulgar sound”
― Joseph Roth, The Emperor's Tomb

“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.”
― Oscar Wilde

“My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) – or to ‘unconstitutional’ Monarchy.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

“It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
― C.S. Lewis

“When I am dead, I hope it may be said: "His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.”
― Hilaire Belloc

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“I expect I shall feel better after tea.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Carry On, Jeeves

“But here's some advice, boy. Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions.”
― Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

“If you have enough book space, I don't want to talk to you.”
― Terry Pratchett

“I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?"
Death thought about it.
CATS, he said eventually. CATS ARE NICE.”
― Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

“It's a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love.”
― Graham Greene, The End of the Affair

“You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
― Graham Greene, The Third Man

“America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.”
― Oscar Wilde

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“Signs and symbols rule the world, not words nor laws.”
― Confucius

“The world says: "You have needs -- satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“That was how things were back then. Anything that grew took its time growing, and anything that perished took a long time to be forgotten. But everything that had once existed left its traces, and people lived on memories just as they now live on the ability to forget quickly and emphatically.”
― Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March

“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“The absence of the will to live is, alas, not sufficient to make one want to die.”
― Michel Houellebecq

“You wouldn't abandon ship in a storm just because you couldn't control the winds.”
― Thomas More, Utopia

“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY.”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

“Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

“Knowledge is only one half. Faith is the other.”
― Novalis

“The past is always beautiful. So, for that matter, is the future. Only the present hurts, and we carry it around like an abscess of suffering, our compassion between two infinities of happiness and peace.”
― Michel Houellebecq, Soumission