Quote collection
441 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I see America spreading disaster. I see America as a black curse upon the world. I see a long night settling in and that mushroom which has poisoned the world withering at the roots."
"True strength lies in submission which permits one to dedicate his life, through devotion, to something beyond himself."
"Surely every one realizes, at some point along the way, that he is capable of living a far better life than the one he has chosen."
"An artist earns the right to call himself a creator only when he admits to himself that he is but an instrument."
"If you can fall in love again and again if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical you've got it half licked."
"I think someday you're going to be a great writer," he said. "But" he added maliciously, "first you'll have to suffer a bit. I mean really suffer, because you don't know what the word means yet. You only think you've suffered. You've got to fall in love first."
"I wanted to feel the blood running back into my veins, even at the cost of annihilation. I wanted to shake the stone and light out of my system. I wanted the dark fecundity of nature, the deep well of the womb, silence, or else the lapping of the black waters of death. I wanted to be that night which the remorseless eye illuminated, a night diapered with stars and trailing comets. To be of night so frighteningly silent, so utterly incomprehensible and eloquent at the same time. Never more to speak or to listen or to think."
"Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning."
"It is almost banal to say so yet it needs to be stressed continually: all is creation, all is change, all is flux, all is metamorphosis."
"We create our fate everyday"
"When I realize that she is gone, perhaps gone forever, a great void opens up and I feel that I am falling, falling, falling into deep, black space. And this is worse than tears, deeper than regret or pain or sorrow, it is the abyss into which Satan was plunged. There is no climbing back, no ray of light, no sound of human voice or human touch of hand."
"Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing."
"In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest."
"In the attempt to defeat death man has been inevitably obliged to defeat life, for the two are inextricably related. Life moves on to death, and to deny one is to deny the other."
"Example moves the world more than doctrine."
"Let me be, was all I wanted. Be what I am, no matter how I am."
"To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing."
"Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end."
"We create our fate every day . . . most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior."
"I soon found out you can't change the world. The best you can do is to learn to live with it."