All our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going to last. Proust

 

 

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Literature is a hatchet with which we chop at the frozen seas inside us. Kafka

The habit of supplying our ideas from foreign sources enfeebles all internal strength of thought. William Hazlitt

There are so many who can figure costs and so few who can measure values. Oscar Wilde

We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
Swinburne

Fame is the sum of misunderstandings that accrue around a name. Rainer Maria Rilke

If every man could read the hearts of others there would be more men anxious to descend than to rise in life. Jean Jacques Rousseau.

Almost everyman wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities which he does not possess. Samuel Johnson.

Consumerism is not just relationship to objects, to the things we buy, but it's a way of life, with its assumption of gratification, of manageable pleasures, and its ultimate inability to equip us when we're confronted with real suffering. Jennifer Szalia

Like a bird on a wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to free. Leonard Cohen

Generosity is only estimable in those who know the cost of things.
Jean Paul Sartre

Statistics are human beings with tears wiped off. Paul Brodeur.

I don't know what weapons World War III will be fought with, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. Albert Einstein

The publicity image steals our love of ourselves as we are and offers it back to us for the price of the product.” John Berger

There is no smaller package in all the world than that of a man all wrapped up in himself. William Sloane Coffin

Faiths must not be allowed to hide their depradation behind our toleration. Leon Wieseltier.

First, they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Next, the government came after the socialists, the trade unionists, the Jews and, finally they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me. Martin Niemoeller.

Not to know what happened before one was born is always to be a child. Cicero.

War is God's way of teaching Americans geography. Ambroise Pierce.

God could not be everywhere and therefore he made mothers. Rudyard Kipling.

The essence of being human is that . . . one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals. George Orwell.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. Proust.

The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power. Shakespeare.

Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied. Otto von Bismarck.

Speech is the surplus of our existence over natural being . . . . which like a wave gathers and poises itself to hurtle beyond its own limits. Merleau-Ponty

The intellectual is in search of a doctrine which shall make great demands on him and cure him of his subjctivity. Merleau-Ponty

What a child doesn't receive, he can seldom give later. P.D. James.

The corruption of reason is shown by the existence of so many different and extravagant customs. Pascal.

Sophistication is the ability to approach culture with the mininum amount of anxiety. Northrup Fry.

You win a while,
And then it's done,
Your little winning streak. Leonard Cohen.

The welfare of humanity is always the welfare of tyrants. Camus.

What constitues the Republic is the total destruction of what is opposed to it. Saint-Just

He looked to be filled with a terrible sadness. As if he harbored news of some horrendous loss that no one else had heard of. Some vast tragedy not of fact or incident or event but of the way the world was. Cormac McCarthy

The constellations . . .
worlds sprawled in their pale ignitions
upon the nameless night. Cormac McCarthy

My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night
But ah my foes, and oh, my friends
It gives a lovely light. Edna St. Vincent Millay

Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awating the ultimate practitioner. Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art. Oscar Wilde

A poem is momentary stay against confusion.Robert Frost.

Every generation
is equidistant from God. Leopold Von Ranke

To find the Western path
Right through the gates of wrath. Blake

A patriot must be willing to defend his country from his government. Voltaire.

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.
Sir Winston Churchill

In nature there's no blemish but the mind. None can be called deformed but the unkind. Shakespeare.

Of great riches there is no real use, except it be in the distribution; the rest is but conceit. Francis Bacon.

After the last tree has been cut down, after the last river has been poisoned,
after the last fish has been caught, only then will you find
that money cannot be eaten. Cree prophecy

I am haunted by the possibility that out of our mammalian midst, a Plato,
a Gauss, a Mozart, justified, redeems the species which devised
and carried out Auchwitz. George Steiner.

Sometimes one starts to dream about what culture, literary life, and teaching could be if all those who participate, having for once rejected idols, would give themselves up to the happiness of reflecting together. Merleau-Ponty