Elia > Elia's Quotes

“The Abbe de Saint-Pierre suggested an association of all the states of Europe to maintain perpetual peace among themselves. Is this association practicable, and supposing that it were established, would it be likely to last?”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education

“To write a love letter, you have to start, without knowing, what you want to say, and end, without knowing what you have said.”
― Jean-Jaques Rousseau

“I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.”
― Peter De Vries

“Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“He had said, "I am a man," and that meant certain things to Juana. It meant that he was half insane and half god. It meant that Kino would drive his strength against a mountain and plunge his strength against the sea. Juana, in her woman's soul, knew that the mountain would stand while the man broke himself; that the sea would surge while the man drowned in it. And yet it was this thing that made him a man, half insane and half god, and Juana had need of a man; she could not live without a man.”
― John Steinbeck, The Pearl

“Men know the damage a few words can do to girls’ hearts, and, idiots that we are, we swoon away and fall into the trap, excited because at last a man has set one for us”
― Grégoire Delacourt, La liste de mes envies

“Half the trouble in life is caused by pretending there isn't any.”
― Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

“I have tried hard - but life is difficult, and I am a very useless person. I can hardly be said to have an independent existence. I was just a screw or a cog in the great machine called life, and when I dropped out of it I found I was no use anywhere else. What can one do when one finds out that one only fits into one hole? One must go back to it or be thrown out into the rubbish heap - and you don't know what it's like in the rubbish heap!”
― Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

“The whole truth?" Miss Bart laughed. "What is the truth? Where a woman is concerned, it's the story that's easiest to believe. In this case it's a great deal easier to believe Bertha Dorset's story than mine, because she has a big house and an opera box, and it's convenient to be on good terms with her”
― Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

“For darkness restores what light cannot repair.”
― Joseph Brodsky

“I would like to make a film to tell children "it's good to be alive".”
― Hayao Miyazaki

“Powerful women always interpret hostility as unrequited love.”
― Tina Brown

“But such conclusions as that Napoleon was the greatest of modern generals, or that the climate of California is delightful, however incontestable they may be, are not properly facts../p>”
― Strunk Jr., William, Elements of Style

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Le nihiliste a raison de penser que le monde no possède aucune justification et que lui-même n'est rien; mais il oublie qu'il lui appartient de justifier le monde et de se faire exister valablement.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, Pour une morale de l'ambiguïté

“The irony, thought, is that that very desire for confidence is precisely what ends up undermining the accuracy of their decision”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“Big Data processes codify the past. They do not invent the future. Doing that requires moral imagination, and that’s something only humans can provide. We have to explicitly embed better values into our algorithms, creating Big Data models that follow our ethical lead. Sometimes that will mean putting fairness ahead of profit.”
― Cathy O'Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy

“We have to learn to interrogate our data collection process, not just our algorithms.”
― Cathy O'Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy