Quote collection
278 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much."
"All a man can betray is his conscience."
"The question is not how to get cured, but how to live."
"The ethical view of the universe involves us in so many cruel and absurd contradictions that I have come to suspect that the aim of creation cannot be ethical at all."
"But it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker - may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling!"
"Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality."
"We live as we dream - alone."
"The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness."
"There is something haunting in the light of the moon."
"Certain streets have an atmosphere of their own, a sort of universal fame and the particular affection of their citizens. One of such streets is the Cannebiere, and the jest: "If Paris had a Cannebiere, it would be a little Marseilles" is the jocular expression of municipal pride. I, too, I have been under the spell. For me it has been a street leading into the unknown."
"My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see."
"I slipped the book into my pocket. I assure you to leave off reading was like tearing myself away from the shelter of an old and solid friendship."
"Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life."
"Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys."
"I am afraid that if you want to go down into history you'll have to do something for it."
"All creative art is magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar and surprising."
"Who knows what true loneliness is - not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion."
"He struggled with himself, too. I saw it -- I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself."
"I suppose everybody must be always just a little homesick."
"My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel — it is, before all, to make you see. That — and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm — all you demand; and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask."