Quote collection
231 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn't make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting - the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near."
"It wasn't that he was specially ungenerous but that he put things off to give his generosity a longer and more significant route."
"The best and purest human beings, from the beginning of time, have understood that life is sacred."
"I love solitude, but I prize it most when plenty of company is available."
"It's goodbye to reality when love sets in."
"It's no disgrace to be a private, you know. Socrates was a plain foot soldier, a hoplite."
"The fact that there are so many weak, poor and boring stories and novels written and published in America has been ascribed by our rebels to the horrible squareness of our institutions, the idiocy of power, the debasement of sexual instincts, and the failure of writers to be alienated enough. The poems and novels of these same rebellious spirits, and their theoretical statements, are grimy and gritty and very boring too, besides being nonsensical, and it is evident by now that polymorphous sexuality and vehement declarations of alienation are not going to produce great works of art either."
"Unfortunately for the betterment of mankind it is not always the fair-minded who are in the right."
"There is much to be said for exotic marriages. If your husband is a bore, it takes years longer to discover."
"For the first time in history, the human species as a whole has gone into politics. Everyone is in the act, and there is no telling what may come of it."
"It's not up to me ... to make the world consistent."
"Death deserves dignity."
"I think that New York is not the cultural centre of America, but the business and administrative centre of American culture."
"Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately."
"...is the carbon molecule lined with thought?"
"A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life. It tells us that for every human being there is a diversity of existences, that the single existence is itself an illusion in part, that these many existences signify something, tend to something, fulfill something; it promises us meaning, harmony, and even justice."
"The modern reader (or viewer, or listener: let's include everybody) is perilously overloaded. His attention is, to use the latest lingo,'targeted' by powerful forces? Our consciousness is a staging area, a field of operations for all kinds of enterprises, which make free use of it."
"One of the booby traps of freedom - which is bordered on all sides by isolation - is that we think so well of ourselves. I now see that I have helped myself to the best cuts at life's banquet."
"The only real distinction at this dangerous moment in human history and cosmic development has nothing to do with medals and ribbons. Not to fall asleep is distinguished. Everything else is mere popcorn."
"There is simply too much to think about."