Jeremiah > Jeremiah's Quotes

“The first study for the man who wants to be a poet is knowledge of himself, complete: he searches for his soul, he inspects it, he puts it to the test, he learns it. As soon as he has learned it, he must cultivate it! I say that one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet becomes a seer through a long, immense, and reasoned derangement of all the senses. All shapes of love suffering, madness. He searches himself, he exhausts all poisons in himself, to keep only the quintessences. Ineffable torture where he needs all his faith, all his superhuman strength, where he becomes among all men the great patient, the great criminal, the great accursed one--and the supreme Scholar! For he reaches the unknown! ....So the poet is actually a thief of Fire!”
― Arthur Rimbaud

“These Songs are not meant to be understood, you understand.
They are only meant to terrify & comfort.”
― John Berryman, The Dream Songs

“We must travel in the direction of our fear.”
― John Berryman

“We are all born mad. Some remain so.”
― Samuel Beckett

“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“I'm not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it.”
― Machiavelli Niccolo

“Men are driven by two principal impulses, either by love or by fear.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Discourses

“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”
― T.S. Eliot

“To communicate with Mars, converse with spirits,
To report the behaviour of the sea monster,
Describe the horoscope, haruspicate or scry,
Observe disease in signatures, evoke
Biography from the wrinkles of the palm
And tragedy from fingers; release omens
By sortilege, or tea leaves, riddle the inevitable
With playing cards, fiddle with pentagrams
Or barbituric acids, or dissect
The recurrent image into pre-conscious terrors—
To explore the womb, or tomb, or dreams; all these are usual
Pastimes and drugs, and features of the press:
And always will be, some of them especially
When there is distress of nations and perplexity
Whether on the shores of Asia, or in the Edgware Road.
Men's curiosity searches past and future
And clings to that dimension. ...”
― T.S. Eliot

“An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“You can never be overdressed or overeducated.”
― Oscar Wilde

“A good friend will always stab you in the front.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”
― Bertrand Russell

“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

“Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.”
― Bertrand Russell

“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
― Bertrand Russell

“I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.”
― Bertrand Russell

“It's easy to fall in love. The hard part is finding someone to catch you.”
― Bertrand Russell

“The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.”
― Bertrand Russell

“And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“That is the central double standard in ethnic racism: loving one’s position on the ladder above other ethnic groups and hating one’s position below that of other ethnic groups. It is angrily trashing the racist ideas about one’s own group but happily consuming the racist ideas about other ethnic groups. It is failing to recognize that racist ideas we consume about others came from the same restaurant and the same cook who used the same ingredients to make different degrading dishes for us all.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist

“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”
― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“The course of true love never did run smooth; But, either it was different in blood,
O cross! too high to be enthrall’d to low.
Or else misgraffed in respect of years,
O spite! too old to be engag’d to young.
Or else it stood upon the choice of friends,
O hell! to choose love by another’s eye.”
― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“Take pains. Be perfect.”
― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“Methought I was enamour'd of an ass.”
― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“Of the cultural causes of misogyny, rejection of or guilt about sex is the most obvious. It leads naturally to the degradation of woman as the sexual object and the projection onto her of lust and the desire to seduce, which a man must repress in himself. At the same time that he denigrated woman’s sexual function, the preoccupation with sex resulting from the attempt to repress desire is apt to make him see her exclusively as a sexual being, more lustful than man and not spiritual at all….Misogyny can also develop as a result of the idealization with which men have glorified women as mistresses, wives, and mothers. This has led to a natural reaction, a desire to tear down what has been raised unduly high.”
― Katherine Rogers

“A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?”
― George Washington