Michal > Michal's Quotes

“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”
― Confucius, Confucius: The Analects

“The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meaning is unknown, since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown.”
― René Magritte

“The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.”
― Walker Percy

“What is beautiful is good, and who is good will soon be beautiful.”
― Sappho

“May I write words more naked than flesh,
stronger than bone, more resilient than
sinew, sensitive than nerve.”
― Sappho

“Although only breath, words which I command are immortal.”
― Sappho

“You may forget but
let me tell you
this: someone in
some future time
will think of us”
― Sappho, The Art of Loving Women

“someone will remember us
I say
even in another time”
― Sappho, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho

“Sections in the bookstore

- Books You Haven't Read
- Books You Needn't Read
- Books Made for Purposes Other Than Reading
- Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong to the Category of Books Read Before Being Written
- Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered
- Books You Mean to Read But There Are Others You Must Read First
- Books Too Expensive Now and You'll Wait 'Til They're Remaindered
- Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback
- Books You Can Borrow from Somebody
- Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too
- Books You've Been Planning to Read for Ages
- Books You've Been Hunting for Years Without Success
- Books Dealing with Something You're Working on at the Moment
- Books You Want to Own So They'll Be Handy Just in Case
- Books You Could Put Aside Maybe to Read This Summer
- Books You Need to Go with Other Books on Your Shelves
- Books That Fill You with Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified
- Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time to Re-read
- Books You've Always Pretended to Have Read and Now It's Time to Sit Down and Really Read Them”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“Don't be amazed if you see my eyes always wandering. In fact, this is my way of reading, and it is only in this way that reading proves fruitful to me. If a book truly interests me, I cannot follow it for more than a few lines before my mind, having seized on a thought that the text suggests to it, or a feeling, or a question, or an image, goes off on a tangent and springs from thought to thought, from image to image, in an itinerary of reasonings and fantasies that I feel the need to pursue to the end, moving away from the book until I have lost sight of it. The stimulus of reading is indispensable to me, and of meaty reading, even if, of every book, I manage to read no more than a few pages. But those few pages already enclose for me whole universes, which I can never exhaust.”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“One reads alone, even in another's presence.”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be.”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“This is what I mean when I say I would like to swim against the stream of time: I would like to erase the consequences of certain events and restore an initial condition. But every moment of my life brings with it an accumulation of new facts, and each of these new facts bring with it consequences; so the more I seek to return to the zero moment from which I set out, the further I move away from it. . . .”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven't Read, which are frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you...And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too. ”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“No more let life divide what death can join together.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonais

“I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar;”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonais

“I wasn’t meant for reality, but life came and found me.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“I feel as if I'm always on the verge of waking up.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“Lightly, lightly, very lightly,
A wind passes very lightly
And goes away, always very lightly.
And I don’t know what I think
And I don’t want to know.”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Keeper of Sheep

“Most people, if they know they have done wrong, foolishly suppose they can conceal their error by defending it, and finding a justification for it; but in my belief there is only one medicine for an evil deed, and that is for the guilty man to admit his guilt and show that he is sorry for it. Such an admission will make the consequences easier for the victim to bear, and the guilty man himself, by plainly showing his distress at former transgressions, will find good grounds of hope for avoiding similar transgressions in the future.”
― Arrian, The Campaigns of Alexander

“It is more disgraceful for a king to tell lies than anyone else.”
― Arrian, The Campaigns of Alexander

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.”
― W.H. Auden, Selected Poems

“Do not be surprised,' she said. 'It is I, and it is not I; You shall find me again, and you shall lose me; Once more shall I come among you; for few men have seen me, and none has understood me; And you shall forget me, and you shall recognize me, and you shall forget me.”
― Marcel Schwob, The Book of Monelle

“So I took the road less traveled by and that has made all the difference.”
― Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken and Other Poems

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost

“The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
― Robert Frost

“Poetry is what gets lost in translation.”
― Robert Frost

“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.”
― Robert Frost

“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”
― Confucious