“We must cultivate and defend particularity, individuality, and irregularity-life. Human beings do not have a future in the collectivism of bureaucratic states or in the mass society created by capitalism. Every system, by virtue as much of its abstract nature as of its pretension to totality, is the enemy of life. As a forgotten Spanish poet, José Moreno Villa, put it with melancholy wit: "I have discovered in symmetry the root of much iniquity."”
Melancholic feeling
Melancholic Quotes — page 78 of 412
“Dementors caused a person to relive the worst moments of their life. What would spoiled, pampered, bullying Dudley have been forced to hear?”
“But I always felt that I'd rather be provincial hot-tamale than soup without seasoning.”
“Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something-an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man's, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever.”
“Women often have a great need to portray themselves as sympathetic and pleasing, but we're also dark people with dark thoughts.”
“Both hurting and happiness make me feel more alive, but as I get older it seems that hurting's the low hanging fruit. So I pick it.”
“I have made noise enough in the world already, perhaps too much, and am now getting old, and want retirement.”
“My father didn't know his real name. My father got his name from his grandfather and he got his name from his grandfather and he got it from the slave master.”
“I've always been an ironic dreamer, unfaithful to my inner promises. Like a complete outsider, a casual observer of whom I thought I was, I've always enjoyed watching my daydreams go down in defeat. I was never convinced of what I believed in. I filled my hands with sand, called it gold, and opened them up to let it slide through. Words were my only truth. When the right words were said, all was done; the rest was the sand that had always been.”
“Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky-tacky, Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes all the same.”
“It's so strange how life works: You want something and you wait and wait and feel like it's taking forever to come. Then it happens and it's over and all you want to do is curl back up in that moment before things changed.”
“When ignorant people see someone who is dead, they are disgusted and horrified, even thought they too will be dead some day. I thought to myself: I don't want to be like the ignorant people. After then, I couldn't feel the usual intoxication with life anymore.”
“A sensual and intemperate youth hands over a worn-out body to old age. [Lat., Libidinosa etenim et intemperans adolescentiam effoetum corpus tradit senectuti.]”
“I wrote a huge number of letters that spring: one a week to Naoko, several to Reiko, and several more to Midori. I wrote letters in the classroom, I wrote letters at my desk at home with Seagull in my lap, I wrote letters at empty tables during my breaks at the Italian restaurant. It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life.”
“O'er hill and field October's glories fade; O'er hill and field the blackbirds southward fly; The brown leaves rustle down the forest glade, Where naked branches make a fitful shade, And the lost blooms of Autumn withered lie.”
“The occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one has lived through. Most people had not lived -- nor could it, for that matter, be said that they had died-- through any of their terrible events. They had simply been stunned by the hammer. They passed their lives thereafter in a kind of limbo of denied and unexamined pain. The great question that faced him this morning was whether or not had had ever, really, been present at his life.”
“Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.”
“Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you're aboard, there's nothing you can do.”
“Not being beautiful was the true blessing. Not being beautiful forced me to develop my inner resources. The pretty girl has a handicap to overcome.”
“Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?”