Balqis > Balqis's Quotes

“Psychologists call this habituation, economists call it declining marginal utility, and the rest of us call it marriage.”
― Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness

“Among life’s cruellest truths is this one: wonderful things are especially wonderful the first time they happen, but their wonderfulness wanes with repetition.”
― Daniel M. Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness: An insightful neuroscience self-help psychology book on cognitive enhancement and human behavior

“My friends tell me that I have a tendency to point out problems without offering solutions, but they never tell me what I should do about it.”
― Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness

“We live in a world in which people are censured, demoted, imprisoned, beheaded, simply because they have opened their mouths, flapped their lips, and vibrated some air. Yes, those vibrations can make us feel sad or stupid or alienated. Tough shit. That's the price of admission to the marketplace of ideas. Hateful, blasphemous, prejudiced, vulgar, rude, or ignorant remarks are the music of a free society, and the relentless patter of idiots is how we know we're in one. When all the words in our public conversation are fair, good, and true, it's time to make a run for the fence.”
― Daniel Gilbert

“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.

Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men – friends, coworkers, strangers – giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I’d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much – no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version – maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. (How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: “I like strong women.” If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women.”)”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“Tampon commercial, detergent commercial, maxi pad commercial, windex commercial - you'd think all women do is clean and bleed.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“There's a difference between really loving someone and loving the idea of her.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“Love makes you want to be a better man—right, right. But maybe love, real love, also gives you permission to just be the man you are.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“It’s a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“I don't understand the point of being together if you're not the happiest.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us.”
― David Richo

“The Church says: the body is a sin.
Science says: the body is a machine.
Advertising says: The body is a business.
The Body says: I am a fiesta.”
― Eduardo Galeano, Walking Words

“الجوع يتغذى على الخوف / خوف الصمت يدوي في الشوارع / الخوف يهدد:/ إذا أحببت ، تصاب بالإيدز / إذا دخنت ، تصب بالسرطان / إذا تنفست ، تتلوث / إذا شربت ، تحصل على حوادث / إذا أكلت ، ترتفع فيك نسبة الكولسترول / إذا عبرت عن نفسك ، تسرح ، إذا سرت ، تسرق / إذا فكرت ، تقلق / إذا شككت ، تجن / إذا شعرت ، تعاني من الوحدة”
― إدواردو غاليانو

“We cannot, after all, judge a biography by its length, by the number of pages in it; we must judge by the richness of the contents...Sometimes the 'unfinisheds' are among the most beautiful symphonies.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, The Doctor and the Soul

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“This was freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“I think about you. But I don't say it anymore.”
― Marguerite Duras, Hiroshima mon amour

“هناك من لا يستطيع أن يلهو إلا وهو في قطيع ..البطل الحقيقي يلهو وحيدا”
― شارل بودلير

“تعريف الجميل-عندي- إنه شيء ما متأجج وحزين, شيء ما غير محدد يُفسح المجال للتخمين, الغموض واحد من أهم شروط الجمال”
― شارل بودلير, اليوميات

“At all costs the true world of childhood must prevail, must be restored; that world whose momentous, heroic, mysterious quality is fed on airy nothings, whose substance is so ill-fitted to withstand the brutal touch of adult inquisition.”
― Jean Cocteau, The Holy Terrors

“أنا لن أكون أبا أبدا ،ولن تكون لي زوجة وأبناء.لن أعطى هذا العالم أطفالا ليعذبهم كما تعذبت،فلا طاقة لي لاحتمال عذاب طفل.”
― Youssef Ziedan, عزازيل

“Beauty is like a train that ceaselessly roars out of the Gare de Lyon and which I know will never leave, which has not left. It consists of jolts and shocks, many of which do not have much importance, but which we know are destined to produce one Shock, which does...The human heart, beautiful as a seismograph...Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or will not be at all.”
― Andre Breton, Nadja

“...with the end of my breath, which is the beginning of yours.”
― André Breton, Nadja

“La beauté sera CONVULSIVE ou ne sera pas.”
― André Breton, Nadja

“Love...no such thing.

Whatever it is that binds families and married couples together, that's not love. That's stupidity or selfishness or fear. Love doesn't exist.

Self interest exists, attachment based on personal gain exists, complacency exists. But not love. Love has to be reinvented, that’s certain.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell and The Drunken Boat

“Ta voix, tes yeux, tes mains, tes lèvres,
Nos silences, nos paroles,
La lumière qui s’en va, la lumière qui revient,
Un seul sourire pour nous deux,
Par besoin de savoir, j’ai vu la nuit créer le jour sans que nous changions d’apparence,
Ô bien-aimé de tous et bien-aimé d’un seul,
En silence ta bouche a promis d’être heureuse,
De loin en loin, ni la haine,
De proche en proche, ni l’amour,
Par la caresse nous sortons de notre enfance,
Je vois de mieux en mieux la forme humaine,
Comme un dialogue amoureux, le cœur ne fait qu’une seule bouche
Toutes les choses au hasard, tous les mots dits sans y penser,
Les sentiments à la dérive, les hommes tournent dans la ville,
Le regard, la parole et le fait que je t’aime,
Tout est en mouvement, il suffit d’avancer pour vivre,
D’aller droit devant soi vers tout ce que l’on aime,
J’allais vers toi, j’allais sans fin vers la lumière,
Si tu souris, c’est pour mieux m’envahir,
Les rayons de tes bras entrouvraient le brouillard.”
― Paul Éluard

“That’s what I do: I make coffee and occasionally succumb to suicidal nihilism. But you shouldn’t worry — poetry is still first. Cigarettes and alcohol follow”
― Anne Sexton