J. > J.'s Quotes

“Ignorance is bold, and knowledge is reserved”
― Thucydides

“It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends”
― Czeslaw Milosz

“I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“By fearing whom I trust I find my way
To truth; by trusting wholly I betray
The trust of wisdom; better far is Doubt
Which brings the false into the Light of Day.”
― Abu Al-Maari

“The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?”
― Dorothy Day

“Hardly anyone still reads nowadays. People make use of the writer only in order to work off their own excess energy on him in a perverse manner, in the form of agreement or disagreement.”
― Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities

“Creative activity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.”
― Arthur Koestler, Drinkers of Infinity: Essays 1955-1967

“I mean maybe I was holding all the aces, but what was the game?”
― Joan Didion

“Life is a constant struggle between being an individual and being a member of the community.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“No to laugh, not to lament, not to detest, but to understand.”
― Benedict de Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise

“Love of learning is a pleasant and universal bond since it deals with what one is and not what one has.”
― Freya Stark

“Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.”
― Zadie Smith , White Teeth

“When everything was fine
And the notion of sin had vanished
And the earth was ready
In universal peace
To consume and rejoice
Without creeds and utopias,

I, for unknown reasons,
Surrounded by the books
Of prophets and theologians,
Of philosophers, poets,
Searched for an answer,
Scowling, grimacing,
Waking up at night, muttering at dawn.

What oppressed me so much
Was a bit shameful.
Talking of it aloud
Would show neither tact nor prudence.
It might even seem an outrage
Against the health of mankind. . .”
― Czesław Miłosz

“Nobody who says, ‘I told you so’ has ever been, or will ever be, a hero.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“There is another world, but it is in this one.”
― Paul Éluard

“In hatred is love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul.”
― Mary Renault, The Mask of Apollo

“It's humiliating to be dependent, anyway, but it's still a poorer pass to have no one to depend on.”
― John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids

“Arguments can always be found to turn desire into policy.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The Guns of August

“The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.”
― H.L. Mencken

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“I am not responsible for actions of the imaginary version of me you have inside your head.”
― John Scalzi

“Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.”
― Bertold Brecht

“The past does not only draw us back to the past. There are certain memories of the past that have strong steel springs and, when we who live in the present touch them, they are suddenly stretched taut and then they propel us into the future.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

“Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise. ”
― Lewis Thomas

“Life is a system of recurrent pairs, the poison and the antidote being eternally packaged together by some considerate heavenly druggist.”
― Mary McCarthy

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
― James Baldwin

“Youth eats all the sugared fancy cakes and regards them as its daily bread. But there'll come a time when you'll start asking just for a crust.”
― Ivan Turgenev

“It's amazing how right you can be about a person you don't know; it's only the people you do know who confuse you.”
― Elaine Dundy, The Dud Avocado

“More and more we are into communications; and less and less into communication.”
― Studs Terkel

“Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don't believe is right. ”
― Jane Goodall