Don > Don's Quotes

“When you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back at you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Фридрих Ницше

“Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.”
― Franz Kafka

“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Know thyself? If I knew myself, I'd run away.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in yourselves.
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Where is the lightning to lick you with its tongue. Where is the frenzy with which you should be inoculated. Behold. I give you the Ubermensch. He is this lightning. He is this frenzy.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“This I want to believe implicitly: Man was born for love and revolution.”
― Osamu Dazai, The Setting Sun

“Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness.

Everything passes.

That is the one and only thing that I have thought resembled a truth in the society of human beings where I have dwelled up to now as in a burning hell.

Everything passes.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“Last year nothing happened
The year before nothing happened
And the year before that nothing
happened.”
― Osamu Dazai, The Setting Sun

“Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as
the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“To read without joy is stupid.”
― John Williams

“Lust and learning,” Katherine once said. “That’s really all there is, isn’t it?”
― John Williams, Stoner

“The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard

“When a boy… discovers that he is more given into introspection and consciousness of self than other boys his age, he easily falls into the error of believing it is because he is more mature than they. This was certainly a mistake in my case. Rather, it was because the other boys had no such need of understanding themselves as I had: they could be their natural selves, whereas I was to play a part, a fact that would require considerable understanding and study. So it was not my maturity but my sense of uneasiness, my uncertainty that was forcing me to gain control over my consciousness. Because such consciousness was simply a steppingstone to aberration and my present thinking was nothing but uncertain and haphazard guesswork.”
― Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask

“...you don't really become a finer person just by reading lots of books.”
― Natsume Sōseki, Kokoro

“What happens when people open their hearts?"
"They get better.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Does pain go away and leave no trace, then?’
‘You sometimes even feel sentimental for it.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, Thousand Cranes

“Creative people have to be fundamentally egoistic. This may sound pompous, but it happens to be the truth. People who live their lives watching what goes on around them, trying not to make waves, and looking for the easy compromise are not going to be able to do creative work, whatever their field. To build something where there was nothing requires deep individual concentration, and in most cases that kind of concentration occurs in a place unrelated to cooperation with others, a place we might even call dämonisch.”
― Haruki Murakami, Absolutely on Music: Conversations with Seiji Ozawa

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things..”
― Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays

“Books delight to the very marrow of one's bones. They speak to us, consult with us, and join with us in a living and intense intimacy.”
― Plutarch

“Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! 'Have courage to use your own reason!'- that is the motto of enlightenment.”
― Immanuel Kant, An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?

“Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser men.”
― Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy

“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“As Pushkin put it: He had no itch to dig for glories deep in the dirt that time has laid.”
― Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

“If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.”
― Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

“If you wish to control others you must first control yourself”
― Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy