FenrirFree > FenrirFree 's Quotes

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
― Marcus Aurelius

“Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.”
― Marcus Aurelius

“If any man despises me, that is his problem. My only concern is not doing or saying anything deserving of contempt.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Humans have come into being for the sake of each other, so either teach them, or learn to bear them.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“You can't find someone who doesn't want to be found.”
― Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits

“Words are not that important when you recognize intentions.”
― Isabel Allende, City of the Beasts

“Just as when we come into the world, when we die we are afraid of the unknown. But the fear is something from within us that has nothing to do with reality. Dying is like being born: just a change”
― Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits

“I write, she wrote, that memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously.”
― Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits

“My son, the Holy Church is on the right, but Jesus Christ was always on the left.”
― Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits

“I couldn't leave, because far from this land I would have been like the trees they cut down at Christmas, those poor pines without roots that last a little while and then die.”
― Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits

“Now that I have overcome so much pain and can read my destiny like a map full of errors, when I feel no pity for myself and can review my existence without sentimentality, because I have found relative peace, I only lament the loss of innocence. I miss the idealism of my youth, of the time when there was still a clear dividing line between good and evil for me and I believed that it was possible to always act in accordance with immovable principles.”
― Isabel Allende, The Infinite Plan

“Painters, poets and philosophers have seen many things in the myth of Sisyphus. They have seen an image of the absurdity of human life, the futility of effort, the remorseless cruelty of fate, the unconquerable power of gravity. But they have seen too something of mankind’s courage, resilience, fortitude, endurance and self-belief. They see something heroic in our refusal to submit.”
― Stephen Fry, Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold

“...we do not lend the hearth quite the importance that our ancestors did, Greek or otherwise. Yet, even for us, the word stands for something more than just a fireplace. We speak of 'hearth and home'. The word 'hearth' shares its ancestry with 'heart', just as the modern Greek for 'hearth' is kardia, which also means 'heart'. In Ancient Greece the wider concept of hearth and home was expressed by the oikos, which lives on for us today in economics and ecology. The Latin for hearth is focus - with speaks for itself. It is a strange and wonderful thing that out of the words for fireplace we have spun "cardiologist', 'deep focus' and 'eco-warrior'. The essential meaning of centrality that connects them also reveals the great significance of the hearth to the Greeks and Romans, and consequently the importance of Hestia, its presiding deity.”
― Stephen Fry, Mythos - The Greek Myths Retold

“She loved him, in fact; his violence and strength appealed to some deep part of her. He in turn grew to love her, so far as such a violent brute was capable of the emotion. Love and war, Venus and Mars, have always had a strong affinity. No one quite knows why, but plenty of money has been made trying to find an answer.”
― Stephen Fry, Mythos - The Greek Myths Retold

“You see?' said Prometheus. 'It is your fate to be Heracles the hero, burdened with labours, yet it is also your choice. You choose to submit to it. Such is the paradox of living. We willingly accept that we have no will.”
― Stephen Fry, Heroes: Mortals and Monsters, Quests and Adventures

“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

“I felt like crying but nothing came out. it was just a sort of sad sickness, sick sad, when you can't feel any worse. I think you know it. I think everybody knows it now and then. but I think I have known it pretty often, too often.”
― Charles Bukowski, Tales of Ordinary Madness

“the free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it - basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.”
― Charles Bukowski, Tales of Ordinary Madness

“I walked around the block twice, passed 200 people and failed to see a human being.”
― Charles Bukowski, Tales of Ordinary Madness

“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Real loneliness is not necessarily limited to when you are alone.”
― Charles Bukowski

“The true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself; my first homelands have been books, and to a lesser degree schools.”
― Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian

“Little soul, gentle and drifting, guest and companion of my body, now you will dwell below in pallid places, stark and bare; there you will abandon your play of yore. But one moment still, let us gaze together on these familiar shores, on these objects which doubtless we shall not see again....Let us try, if we can, to enter into death with open eyes...”
― Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian

“We are all subject to the fates. But we must act as if we are not, or die of despair.”
― Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass

“It was such a strange tormenting feeling when your daemon was pulling at the link between you; part physical pain deep in the chest, part intense sadness and love. Everyone tested it when they were growing up: seeing how far they could pull apart, coming back with intense relief.”
― Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass

“Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit.”
― Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife