"A man is whole only when he takes into account his shadow."
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Quote collection
Djuna Barnes quotes (page 1 of 4)
75 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I am not a critic; to me criticism is so often nothing more than the eye garrulously denouncing the shape of the peephole that gives access to hidden treasure."
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"Time is a great conference planning our end, and youth is only the past putting a leg forward."
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"I talk too much because I have been made so miserable by what you are keeping hushed."
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"The priceless galaxy of misinformation called the mind."
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"Our bones ache only while the flesh is on them."
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"The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy."
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"The heart of the jealous knows the best and most satisfying love, that of the other's bed, where the rival perfects the lover's imperfections."
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"New York is the meeting place of the peoples, the only city where you can hardly find a typical American."
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"I like my human experience served up with a little silence and restraint. Silence makes experience go further and, when it does die, gives it that dignity common to a thing one had touched and not ravished"
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"This head has risen above its hair in a moment of abandon known only to men who have drawn their feet out of their boots to walk awhile in the corridors of the mind."
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"I have been loved,' she said, 'by something strange, and it has forgotten me."
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"Well, isn't Bohemia a place where everyone is as good as everyone else - and must not a waiter be a little less than a waiter to be a good Bohemian?"
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"Man is the only thing that has no further use after something goes amiss."
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"The whole world is nothing but a noise, as hot as the inside of a tiger's mouth. They call it civilization - that is a lie! But some day you may have to go out, someone will try to take you out, and you will not understand them or what they are saying, unless you understand nothing, absolutely nothing, then you will manage."
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"Destiny and history are untidy."
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"Love is the first lie; wisdom the last."
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"In the acceptance of depravity the sense of the past is most truly captured. What is a ruin but time easing itself of endurance? Corruption is the Age of Time."
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"My war brought me many things; let yours bring you as much. Life is not to be told, call it as loud as you like, it will not tell itself. No one will be much or little except in someone else's mind, so be careful of the minds you get into, and remember Lady Macbeth, who had her mind in her hand. We can't all be as safe as that."
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"What is a ruin but time easing itself of endurance?"
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