Quote collection
78 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"(T)here was a story they used to tell at home about a girl whose punishment was that every time she opened her mouth, snakes and toads came out, snakes and toads with every word. The book didn't say what she did about it, but I've always assumed she probably ended up keeping her mouth shut."
"Every reasonable human being should be a moderate Socialist."
"He took in the squeaky music, the vulgar and pining melodies, because passion immobilizes good taste and seriously considers what soberly would be thought of as funny and to be resented."
"I shall need to sleep three weeks on end to get rested from the rest I've had."
"There were profound reasons for his attachment to the sea: he loved it because as a hardworking artist he needed rest, needed to escape from the demanding complexity of phenomena and lie hidden on the bosom of the simple and tremendous; because of a forbidden longing deep within him that ran quite contrary to his life's task and was for that very reason seductive, a longing for the unarticulated and immeasurable, for eternity, for nothingness. To rest in the arms of perfection is the desire of any man intent upon creating excellence; and is not nothingness a form of perfection?"
"The accouterments of life were so rich and varied, so elaborated, that almost no place at all was left for life itself. Each and every accessory was so costly and beautiful that it had an existence above and beyond the purpose it was meant to serve – confusing the observer and absorbing attention."
"I don't think anyone is thinking long-term now."
"Speech is civilization itself."
"Only love, and not reason, yields kind thoughts."
"For the sake of goodness and love, man shall let death have no sovereignty over his thoughts."
"Forbearance in the face of fate, beauty constant under torture, are not merely passive. They are a positive achievement, an explicit triumph."
"And then the sly arch-lover that he was, he said the subtlest thing of all: that the lover was nearer the divine than the beloved; for the god was in the one but not in the other - perhaps the tenderest, most mocking thought that ever was thought, and source of all the guile and secret bliss the lover knows."
"He probably was mediocre after all, though in a very honorable sense of that word."
"…What our age needs, what it demands, what it will create for itself, is—terror."
"Has the world ever been changed by anything save the thought and its magic vehicle the Word?"
"He thought what a fine thing it was that people made music all over the world, even in the strangest settings – probably even on polar expeditions."
"Yes, they are carnal, both of them, love and death, and therein lies their terror and their great magic!"
"The books and magazines streamed in. He could buy them all, they piled up around him and even while he read, the number of those still to be read disturbed him. … they stood in rows, weighing down his life like a possession which he did not succeed in subordinating to his personality."