Quote collection
684 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"If the spirit has passed through a great many sensations, possibly it can no longer be sated with them, but grows more excited, and demands more sensations, and stronger and stronger ones, until at length it falls exhausted."
"But I always liked side-paths, little dark back-alleys behind the main road- there one finds adventures and surprises, and precious metal in the dirt."
"For all is like an ocean, all flows and connects; touch it in one place and it echoes at the other end of the world."
"I drink because I wish to multiply my sufferings."
"Every member of the society spies on the rest, and it is his duty to inform against them. All are slaves and equal in their slavery... The great thing about it is equality... Slaves are bound to be equal."
"If God does not exist, everything is permitted."
"'Ever seen a leaf - a leaf from a tree?' 'Yes.' I saw one recently - a yellow one, a little green, wilted at the edges. Blown by the wind. When I was a little boy, I used to shut my eyes in winter and imagine a green leaf, with veins on it, and the sun shining ...' 'What's this - an allegory?' "No; why? Not an allegory - a leaf, just a leaf. A leaf is good. Everything's good.'"
"There is nothing easier than lopping off heads and nothing harder than developing ideas."
"...it all, maybe, most likely, indeed, might turn out for the best."
"We have all lost touch with life, we all limp, each to a greater or lesser degree."
"Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!"
"Of course my jokes are in poor taste, inappropriate, and confused; they reveal my lack of security. But that is because I have no respect for myself."
"It wasn't the New World that mattered... Columbus died almost without seeing it; and not really knowing what he had discovered. It's life that matters, nothing but life - the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all."
"He walked on without resting. He had a terrible longing for some distraction, but he did not know what to do, what to attempt. A new overwhelming sensation was gaining more and more mastery over him every moment; this was an immeasurable, almost physical, repulsion for everything surrounding him, an obstinate, malignant feeling of hatred. All who met him were loathsome to him - he loathed their faces, their movements, their gestures. If anyone had addressed him, he felt that he might have spat at him or bitten him... ."
"Beauty would save the world."
"I wanted to fathom her secrets; I wanted her to come to me and say: "I love you," and if not that, if that was senseless insanity, then...well, what was there to care about? Did I know what I wanted? I was like one demented: all I wanted was to be near her, in the halo of her glory, in her radiance, always, for ever, all my life. I knew nothing more!"
"The most pressing question on the problem of faith is whether a man as a civilized being can believe in the divinity of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, for therein rests the whole of our faith."
"Human laziness makes people pigeonhole one another at first site so that they find nothing in common with one another."
"I must add... my gratitude to you for the attention with which you have listened to me, for, from my numerous observations, our Liberals are never capable of letting anyone else have a conviction of his own without at once meeting their opponent with abuse or even something worse."
"Never mind a little dirt, if the goal is splendid!"