Gino Luka > Gino's Quotes

“Be always drunken.
Nothing else matters:
that is the only question.
If you would not feel
the horrible burden of Time
weighing on your shoulders
and crushing you to the earth,
be drunken continually.

Drunken with what?
With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will.
But be drunken.

And if sometimes,
on the stairs of a palace,
or on the green side of a ditch,
or in the dreary solitude of your own room,
you should awaken
and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped away from you,
ask of the wind,
or of the wave,
or of the star,
or of the bird,
or of the clock,
of whatever flies,
or sighs,
or rocks,
or sings,
or speaks,
ask what hour it is;
and the wind,
wave,
star,
bird,
clock will answer you:
"It is the hour to be drunken!”
― Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen

“For most of human history, 'literature,' both fiction and poetry, has been narrated, not written — heard, not read. So fairy tales, folk tales, stories from the oral tradition, are all of them the most vital connection we have with the imaginations of the ordinary men and women whose labor created our world.”
― Angela Carter

“The original language of Christianity is translation.”
― Lamin Sanneh

“Translation is that which transforms everything so that nothing changes.”
― Günter Grass

“In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected."

(Frauds on the Fairies, 1853)”
― Charles Dickens, Works of Charles Dickens

“Our great mistake is to try to exact from each person virtues which he does not possess, and to neglect the cultivation of those which he has.”
― Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian

“This city belongs to ghosts, to murderers, to sleepwalkers. Where are you, in what bed, in what dream?”
― Marguerite Yourcenar

“I am not sure that the discovery of love is necessarily more exquisite than the discovery of poetry.”
― Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian

“In a time of destruction, create something.”
― Maxine Hong Kingston

“Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect.”
― Margaret Mitchell

“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.”
― Pablo Neruda

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.”
― Freidrich Neitzsche

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood.”
― Friedrich Neitzsche

“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all.”
― Thomas Szasz

“Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence. ”
― Thomas Szasz

“Parents teach children discipline for two different, indeed diametrically opposed, reasons: to render the child submissive to them and to make him independent of them. Only a self-disciplined person can be obedient; and only such a person can be autonomous.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz

“Lahuta mbet varë n’ tra,
Mixha kalbët n’ dhé,
E, nipat s’dinë me i ra!”
― Martin Camaj

“My land

When I die, may I turn into grass
On my mountains in spring,
In autumn I will turn to seed.

When I die, may I turn into water,
My misty breath
Will fall onto the meadows as rain.

When I die, may I turn into stone,
On the confines of my land
May I be a landmark.

Translated by Robert Elsie”
― Martin Camaj

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.”
― Heraclitus

“Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.”
― Rumi