Joakim Paz > Joakim's Quotes

“There is no God any more divine than Yourself.”
― Walt Whitman

“To be great, be whole;
Exclude nothing, exaggerate nothing that is not you.
Be whole in everything. Put all you are
Into the smallest thing you do.
So, in each lake, the moon shines with splendor
Because it blooms up above.”
― Fernando Pessoa, Poems of Fernando Pessoa

“I believe in the flesh and the appetites;
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.
Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch’d from;
The scent of these arm-pits, aroma finer than prayer;
This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“Se te é impossível viver só, nasceste escravo.”
― Fernando Pessoa

“Build your house on granite. By granite I mean your nature that you are torturing to death, the love in your child's body, your wife's dream of love, your own dream of life when you were sixteen. Exchange your illusions for a bit of truth. Throw out your politicians and diplomats! Take your destiny into your own hands and build your life on rock. Forget about your neighbor and look inside yourself! Your neighbor, too, will be grateful. Tell you're fellow workers all over the world that you're no longer willing to work for death but only for life. Instead of flocking to executions and shouting hurrah, hurrah, make a law for the protection of human life and its blessings. Such a law will be part of the granite foundation your house rests on. Protect your small children's love against the assaults of lascivious, frustrated men and women. Stop the mouth of the malignant old maid; expose her publicly or send her to a reform school instead of young people who are longing for love. Don;t try to outdo your exploiter in exploitation if you have a chance to become a boss. Throw away your swallowtails and top hat, and stop applying for a license to embrace your woman. Join forces with your kind in all countries; they are like you, for better or worse. Let your child grow up as nature (or 'God') intended. Don't try to improve on nature. Learn to understand it and protect it. Go to the library instead of the prize fight, go to foreign countries rather than to Coney Island. And first and foremost, think straight, trust the quiet inner voice inside you that tells you what to do. You hold your life in your hands, don't entrust it to anyone else, least of all to your chosen leaders. BE YOURSELF! Any number of great men have told you that.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“A Arte é, com efeito, o aperfeiçoamento subjectivo da vida.”
― Fernando Pessoa, Os Portugueses

“I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best. ”
― Walt Whitman

“Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass;
I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God's name,
And I leave them where they are,
for I know that others will punctually come forever and ever.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“O futuro de Portugal - que não calculo, mas sei - está escrito já, para quem saiba lê-lo, nas trovas de Bandarra, e também nas quadras de Nostradamus. Esse futuro é sermos tudo. Quem, que seja português, pode viver a estreiteza de uma só personalidade, de uma só nação, de uma só fé?”
― Fernando Pessoa

“You differ from a great man in only one respect: the great man was once a very little man, but he developed one important quality: he recognized the smallness and narrowness of his thoughts and actions. Under the pressure of some task that meant a great deal to him, he learned to see how his smallness, his pettiness endangered his happiness. In other words, a great man knows when and in what way he is a little man. A little man does not know he is little and is afraid to know. He hides his pettiness and narrowness behind illusions of strength and greatness, someone else's strength and greatness. He's proud of his great generals but not of himself. He admires an idea he has not had, not one he has had. The less he understands something, the more firmly he believes in it. And the better he understands an idea, the less he believes in it.”
― Wilhelm Reich, Listen, Little Man!

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“TO the States or any one of them, or any city of the States, Resist much, obey little,
Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,
Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth, ever after-ward resumes its liberty.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“The strongest and sweetest songs yet remain to be sung.”
― Walt Whitman

“I meet new Walt Whitmans everyday. There are a dozen of them afloat. I don't know which Walt Whitman I am.”
― Walt Whitman

“A soldier is a "Yahoo" hired to kill in cold blood as many of his own Species, who have never offended him, as possibly he can.”
― Jonathan Swift

“I heartily hate and detest that animal called man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, ans so forth.”
― Jonathan Swift

“Any idiot can face a crisis; it's this day-to-day living that wears you out.”
― Anton Chekhov

“A woman can become a man's friend only in the following stages - first an acquantaince, next a mistress, and only then a friend.”
― Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya

“The world is, of course, nothing but our conception of it.”
― Anton Chekhov

“What transforms this world is — knowledge. Do you see what I mean? Nothing else can change anything in this world. Knowledge alone is capable of transforming the world, while at the same time leaving it exactly as it is. When you look at the world with knowledge, you realize that things are unchangeable and at the same time are constantly being transformed.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“Perfect purity is possible if you turn your life into a line of poetry written with a splash of blood.”
― Yukio Mishima, Runaway Horses

“Happy are those who dare courageously to defend what they love.”
― Ovid

“I am the poet of the poor, because I was poor when I loved; since I could not give gifts, I gave words.”
― Ovid

“Every lover is a soldier.”
― Ovid, Amores

“If you would be loved, be lovable”
― Ovid

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
― Lao Tzu

“Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.”
― Lao Tsu, Tao Teh Ching

“At the center of your being
you have the answer;
you know who you are
and you know what you want.”
― Lao Tzu

“Silence is a source of Great Strength.”
― Lao Tzu

“If you understand others you are smart.
If you understand yourself you are illuminated.
If you overcome others you are powerful.
If you overcome yourself you have strength.
If you know how to be satisfied you are rich.
If you can act with vigor, you have a will.
If you don't lose your objectives you can be long-lasting.
If you die without loss, you are eternal.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching