Nathan Cull > Nathan's Quotes

“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
― Bertrand Russell

“So it always is: when you escape to a desert the silence shouts in your ear.”
― Graham Greene, The Quiet American

“I wish sometimes you had a few bad motives, you might understand a little more about human beings.”
― Graham Greene, The Quiet American

“That was my first instinct -- to protect him. It never occurred to me that there was a greater need to protect myself. Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.”
― Graham Greene, The Quiet American

“People with places to go and people with no place to go; people with a purpose and people with no purpose; people trying to hold time back and people trying to urge it forward”
― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat's cradle is nothing but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X's . . ."
"And?"
"No damn cat, and no damn cradle.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“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

“If the others heard me talking out loud they would think that I am crazy. But since I am not, I do not care.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

“You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought. You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after. If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more?”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“He was going to live forever, or die in the attempt.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead.”
― joseph heller, Catch-22

“Why are they going to disappear him?'
I don't know.'
It doesn't make sense. It isn't even good grammar.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three. Even among men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Two men looked out from prison bars,
One saw the mud, the other saw stars.”
― Dale Carnegie, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living: Time-Tested Methods for Conquering Worry

“when the fierce, burning winds blow over our lives-and we cannot prevent them-let us, too, accept the inevitable. And then get busy and pick up the pieces.”
― Dale Carnegie, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living: Time-Tested Methods for Conquering Worry

“One of the tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon - instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.”
― Dale Carnegie

“Knowledge isn’t power until it is applied.”
― Dale Carnegie

“Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony—Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“An artist paints his picture not in a few hours but in all the years of experience before he takes up the brush, and it is the same with failure.”
― Graham Greene, The Tenth Man

“We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war."
- All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 5”
― Erich Maria Remarque

“At school nobody ever taught us how to light a cigarette in a storm of rain, nor how a fire could be made with wet wood-nor that it is best to stick a bayonet in the belly because there it doesn't get jammed, as it does in the ribs.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier. When he presses himself down upon her long and powerfully, when he buries his face and his limbs deep in her from the fear of death by shell-fire, then she is his only friend, his brother, his mother; he stifles his terror and his cries in her silence and her security; she shelters him and releases him for ten seconds to live, to run, ten seconds of life; receives him again and again and often forever.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“They are more to me than life, these voices, they are more than motherliness and more than fear; they are the strongest, most comforting thing there is anywhere: they are the voices of my comrades.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“We are little flames poorly sheltered by frail walls against the storm of dissolution and madness, in which we flicker and sometimes almost go out…we creep in upon ourselves and with big eyes stare into the night…and thus we wait for morning.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front