“I believe time wounds all heels.”
Melancholic feeling
Melancholic Quotes — page 106 of 412
“It is impossible, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture. That which I have insisted upon as the life of the whole, that spirit which is given only by the hand and eye of the workman, can never be recalled.”
“To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.”
“If I should go before the rest of you Break not a flower nor inscribe a stone, Nor when I'm gone speak in a Sunday voice But be the usual selves that I have known. Weep if you must, Parting is hell, But life goes on, So sing as well.”
“We live on the flat, on the level, and yet - and so - we aspire. Groundlings, we can sometimes reach as far as the gods. Some soar with art, others with religion; most with love. But when we soar, we can also crash. There are few soft landings. We may find ourselves bouncing across the ground with leg-fracting force, dragged towards some foreign railway line. Every love story is a potential grief story. If not at first, then later. If not for one, then for the other. Sometimes, for both.”
“I suppose I passed it a hundred times, But I always stop for a minute. And look at the house, the tragic house, The house with nobody in it.”
“Man and other civilized animals are the only creatures that ever become dirty.”
“I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind, and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self.”
“If I ever become a Saint - I will surely be one of "darkness." I will continually be absent from heaven - to light the light of those in darkness on earth.”
“I did not disregard my culture, if I did, it was the white American culture, and I accepted my true culture, when I accepted Mohammed Ali, because this is a black name, Islam is the black man's religion, and so I would like to say, that I would like to clarify that point that I reclaimed my real culture, and that's being a black man and wearing a black name with a black body, and not a white name, so I would never say that I didn't disown my culture.”
“I live, but live to die: and, living, see nothing to make death hateful, save an innate clinging, a loathsome and yet all invincible instinct of life, which I abhor, as I despise myself, yet cannot overcome — and so I live. Would I had never lived!”
“We are all the fools of time and terror: Days Steal on us and steal from us; yet we live, Loathing our life, and dreading still to die.”
“Never trust a survivor until you know how they survived.”
“Round and round we spin, with feet of lead and wings of tin.”
“I appear at times merry and in good heart, talk, too, before others quite reasonably, and it looks as if I felt, too, God knows how well within my skin. Yet the soul maintains its deathly sleep and the heart bleeds from a thousand wounds.”
“The past is over and done and cannot be changed. This is the only moment we can experience.”
“The real artist has no pride. Unfortunately he sees that his art has no limits. He feels obscurely how far he is from the goal. While he is perhaps being admired by others, he mourns the fact that he has not yet reached the point to which his better genius, like a distant sun, ever beckons to him.”
“The path to youth takes a lifetime.”
“There's lots of good fish in the sea...maybe...but the vast masses seem to be mackerel or herring, and if you're not mackerel or herring yourself, you are likely to find very few good fish in the sea.”
“I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.”