Literature Quotes - Page 16

It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing - they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.

Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.

Mother used to say that however miserable one is, there’s always something to be thankful for. And each morning, when the sky brightened and light began to flood my cell, I agreed with her.

Even if you are alone you wage war with yourself.

You not only are hunted by others, you unknowingly hunt yourself.

I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art: I altered the minds of men, and the colour of things: I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me: I summed up all things in a phrase, all existence in an epigram: whatever I touched I made beautiful

What are we doing to each other? Because I know that I am doing to him exactly what he is doing to me. We are sometimes so happy, and never in our lives have we known more unhappiness.

For a game, you don’t need a teacher.

For a long time now a hint of aversion had lain on everything he did and experienced, a shadow of impotence and loneliness, an all-encompassing distaste for which he could not find the complementary inclination. He felt at times as though he had been born with a talent for which there was at present no objective.

How keen everyone is to make this world their home forgetting its impermanence It's like trying to see and name constellations in a fireworks display.

Jigga, Kells, Not Guilty

Kein Philosoph würde ein dickes Buch schreiben, wenn er im Vornherein wüsste, auf welche Weise er später zitiert werden wird.

My soul is in the sky.

To hide feelings when you are near crying is the secret of dignity.

I am the shore and the ocean, awaiting myself on both sides.

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.

The most complicated skill is to be simple.

It is beautiful to express love and even more beautiful to feel it.

There is another alphabet, whispering from every leaf, singing from every river, shimmering from every sky.

There is no competition of sounds between a nightingale and a violin.