Quotations by Theme
Art - Literature
"Nature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write."
A. E. Housman, 1859-1936
"Great literature should do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions."
A. E. Housman, 1859-1936
"Men should be judged not by their tint of skin, the gods they serve, the vintage they drink, nor by the way they fight, or love, or sin, but by the quality of the thought they think."
Adela Florence Nicolson, 1865-1904
"Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people."
Adrian Mitchell, 1932-
"I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing."
Agatha Christie, 1890-1976
"Evil is not something superhuman, it's something less than human."
Agatha Christie,
"What we really are is, first of all, the whole of our body."
Alan Watts, 1915-1973
"Most of the images of reality on which we base our actions are really based on vicarious experience."
Albert Bandura, 1925-
"Since the order of the world is shaped by death, mightn't it be better for God if we refuse to believe in Him, and struggle with all our might against death without raising our eyes towards the heaven where He sits in silence?"
Albert Camus, 1913-1960
"I don't know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms."
Albert Camus, 1913-1960
"I shall not, as far as I am concerned, try to pass myself off as a Christian in your presence. I share with you the same revulsion from evil. But I do not share your hope, and I continue to struggle against this universe in which children suffer and die."
Albert Camus, 1913-1960
"The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody."
Albert Camus, 1913-1960
"To those who despair of everything reason cannot provide a faith, but only passion, and in this case it must be the same passion that lay at the root of the despair, namely humiliation and hatred."
Albert Camus, 1913-1960
"Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty."
Albert Einstein, 1879-1955
"Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas."
Albert Einstein, 1879-1955
"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
Albert Einstein, 1879-1955
"I paint and sculpt to get a grip on reality... to protect myself."
Alberto Giacometti, 1901-1966
"Which is better: to have Fun with Fungi or to have Idiocy with Ideology, to have Wars because of Words, to have Tomorrow's Misdeeds out of Yesterday's Miscreeds?"
Aldous Huxley, 1894-1963
"You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion.... Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough."
Aldous Huxley,
"To bare our souls is all we ask, to give all we have to life and the beings surrounding us. Here the nature spirits are intense and we appreciate them, make offerings to them - these nature spirits who call us here - sealing our fate with each other, celebrating our love."
Alex Grey, 1953-
"Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for a time, leave us the weaker ever after."
Alexander Pope, 1688-1744
"On life's vast ocean diversely we sail. Reasons the card, but passion the gale."
Alexander Pope,
"Of Manners gentle,/ of Affections mild; /In Wit a man;/Simplicity, a child."
Alexander Pope,
"The true color of life is the color of the body, the color of the covered red, the implicit and not explicit red of the living heart and the pulses. It is the modest color of the unpublished blood."
Alice Meynell, 1847-1922
"Let a man turn to his own childhood - no further - if he will renew his sense of remoteness, and of the mystery of change."
Alice Meynell,
"Happiness is not a matter of events; it depends upon the tides of the mind."
Alice Meynell,
"Rational behavior ... depends upon a ceaseless flow of data from the environment. It depends upon the power of the individual to predict, with at least a fair success, the outcome of his own actions. To do this, he must be able to predict how the environment will respond to his acts. Sanity, itself, thus hinges on man's ability to predict his immediate, personal future on the basis of information fed him by the environment."
ALVIN TOFFLER,
"Painting: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic."
Ambrose Bierce, 1842-1914
"Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable."
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce, 1842-1914?
"Happiness: We rarely feel it. /I would buy it, beg it, steal it,/ Pay in coins of dripping blood/ For this one transcendent good."
Amy Lowell, 1874-1925
"All books are either dreams or swords, you can cut, or you can drug, with words."
Amy Lowell,
"For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives."
Amy Lowell,
"Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in."
Amy Lowell,
"The poet is one who is able to keep the fresh vision of the child alive."
Anais Nin, 1903-1977
"The final lesson a writer learns is that everything can nourish the writer. The dictionary, a new word, a voyage, an encounter, a talk on the street, a book, a phrase learned."
Anais Nin, 1903-1977
"Words make love with one another."
Andre Breton, 1896-1966
"We were always intoxicated with color, with words that speak of color, and with the sun that makes colors live."
Andre Derain,
"Without a family, man, alone in the world, trembles with the cold."
Andre Maurois, 1885-1967
"First, he must hold rational values, and to do this he must be a thinker."
Andrew Bernstein,
"Almost all the ideas we have about being a man or being a woman are so burdened with pain, anxiety, fear and self-doubt. For many of us, the confusion around this question is excruciating."
Andrew Cohen,
"Freedom has no history."
Andrew Cohen, 1955-
"They read good books, and quote,/ but never learn a language other than the scream of rocket-burn/ Our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad;/ elections, money, empire, oil and Dad."
Andrew Motion, 1952-
"I've found a different way to scent the air: already it's a by-word for despair."
Andrew Motion,
"A stone is ingrained with geological and historical memories."
Andy Goldsworthy, 1956
"Mother goddesses are just as silly a notion as father gods. If a revival of the myths of these cults gives woman emotional satisfaction, it does so at the price of obscuring the real conditions of life. This is why they were invented in the first place."
Angela Carter
Angela Carter, 1940-1992
"Accuracy of language is one of the bulwarks of truth."
Anna Jameson,
"Conversation may be compared to a lyre with seven chords - philosophy, art, poetry, love, scandal, and the weather."
Anna Jameson,
"There's not a good poet I know who has not at the beck and call of his memory a vast quantity of poetry that composes his mental library."
Anthony Hecht, 1923-2004
"What words say does not last. The words last. Because words are always the same, and what they say is never the same."
Antonio Porchia, 1886-1968
"The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself."
Archibald MacLeish, 1892-1982
"That peculiar disease of intellectuals, that infatuation with ideas at the expense of experience, that compels experience to conform to bookish expectations."
Archibald MacLeish,
"To see the earth as we now see it, small and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the unending night -- brothers who see now they are truly brothers."
Archibald MacLeish,
"The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself."
Archibald MacLeish,
"There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience and that is not learning from experience."
Archibald McLeish, 1892-1982
"There is no great genius without a mixture of madness."
Aristotle,
"The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance."
Aristotle,
"The energy of the mind is the essence of life."
Aristotle,
"Tragedy is thus a representation of an action that is worth serious attention, complete in itself and of some amplitude... by means of pity and fear bringing about the purgation of such emotions."
Aristotle, 384 BC-322BC
"Poetry is more philosophical and more serious than history, for its statements are in the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars."
Aristotle, 384-322 BCE
"Our ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature."
Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859-1930
"Any truth is better than indefinite doubt."
Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859-1930
"My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation."
Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859-1930
"A play is made by sensing how the forces in life simulate ignorance-you set free the concealed irony, the deadly joke."
Arthur Miller,
"Man must shape his tools lest they shape him."
Arthur Miller,
"I think now that the great thing is not so much the formulation of an answer for myself, for the theater, or the play-but rather the most accurate possible statement of the problem."
Arthur Miller,
"The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less."
Arthur Miller,
"The Sun, the hearth of affection and life, pours burning love on the delighted earth."
Arthur Rimbaud, 1854-1891
"As perfume doth remain/ In the folds where it hath lain,/ So the thought of you remaining/ Deeply folded in my brain,/ Will not leave me: all things leave me:/ You remain."
Arthur Symons, 1865-1945
"I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood."
Audre Lorde,
"To any artist, worthy of the name, all in nature is beautiful, because his eyes, fearlessly accepting all exterior truth, read there, as in an open book, all the inner truth."
Auguste Rodin,
"The artist is the confidant of nature, flowers carry on dialogues with him through the graceful bending of their stems and the harmoniously tinted nuances of their blossoms. Every flower has a cordial word which nature directs towards him."
Auguste Rodin, 1840-1917
"Reason clears and plants the wilderness of the imagination to harvest the wheat of art."
Austin O'Malley,
"When walking through the "valley of shadows," remember, a shadow is cast by a Light."
Austin O'Malley,
"Painting what I experience, translating what I feel, is like a great liberation. But it is also work, self-examination, consciousness, criticism, struggle."
Balthus, 1908-2001
"Painting is the passage from the chaos of the emotions to the order of the possible."
Balthus, 1908-2001
"Love is a force more formidable than any other. It is invisible - it cannot be seen or measured, yet it is powerful enough to transform you in a moment, and offer you more joy than any material possession could."
Barbara de Angelis,
"The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue."
Baruch Spinoza,
"I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused."
Baruch Spinoza,
"The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free."
Baruch Spinoza,
"Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd."
Baruch Spinoza,
"Will and intellect are one and the same thing."
Baruch Spinoza,
"Weigh the meaning and look not at the words."
Ben Jonson, 1572-1637
"My studies in Speculative philosophy, metaphysics, and science are all summed up in the image of a mouse called man running in and out of every hole in the Cosmos hunting for the Absolute Cheese."
Benjamin DeCasseres, 1893-1961
"We must hang together, gentlemen ... else, we shall most assuredly hang separately."
Benjamin Franklin,
"Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none."
Benjamin Franklin,
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."
Benjamin Franklin,
"A kiss from my mother made me a painter."
Benjamin West, 1738-1820
"Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom."
Bertrand Russell,
"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.... This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me."
Bertrand Russell,
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
Fear is the main source of superstition, . . .. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
I wish to preach "the will to doubt". What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite."
Bertrand Russell,
"Governing sense, mind and intellect, intent on liberation, free from desire, fear and anger, the sage is forever free."
Bhagavad Gita,
"Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects."
Blaise Pascal, 1623-1662
"Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our mind."
Bob Marley, 1945-1981
"Once the anchor of reason has been cut, one's craft may go anywhere. One may become a St Francis or equally a Hitler."
Brand Blanshard, 1892-1987
"At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one's lost self."
Brendan Francis,
"Join me in my quest for a greater understanding of our existence. Join me in my desire for a greater self. Join me as I seek the humility to love and understand my fellow man."
Bryant H. McGill, 1969-
"The realities of the world seldom measure up to the sublime designs of human imagination."
Bryant H. McGill, 1969-
"The talent of a true writer and poet is in the ear."
Bryant H. McGill, 1969-
"Truth is not a matter of fact but a state of harmony with progress and hope. Enveloped only in its wings will we ever soar to the promise of our greater selves."
Bryant H. McGill, 1969-
"Where wise actions are the fruit of life, wise discourse is the pollination."
Bryant H. McGill, 1969-
"You may find many contradictory statements and philosophies within my writings. However, to this I will say such is life, for life is full of contradictions."
Bryant H. McGill, 1969-
"Enthusiasm is the energy and force that builds literal momentum of the human soul and mind."
Bryant H. McGill, 1969-
"Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become."
C. S. Lewis, 1889-1963
"All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination."
Carl Gustav Jung, 1875-1961
"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves."
Carl Gustav Jung, 1875-1961
"We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand."
Cecil Day Lewis, 1904-1972
"One does not kill oneself for love of a woman, but because love - any love - reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness."
Cesare Pavese,
"We do not remember days, we remember moments.The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten."
Cesare Pavese,
"Men are more readily contented with no intellectual light than with a little; and wherever they have been taught to acquire some knowledge in order to please others, they have most generally gone on to acquire more, to please themselves."
Charles Caleb Colton, 1780-1832
"Whatever your occupation may be and however crowded our hours with affairs, do not fail to secure at least a few minutes every day for refreshment of your inner life with a bit of poetry."
Charles Elliot Norton, 1827-1908
"One should never criticize his own work except in a fresh and hopeful mood. The self-criticism of a tired mind is suicide."
Charles Horton Cooley,
"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."
Charles Mackay, 1814-1889
"A concept is stronger than a fact."
Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
"There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. Might as well speak of a female liver."
Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
"The pains of disconcerted or frustrated habits, and the inherent pleasure there is in following them, are motives which nature has put into our wills without generally caring to inform us why; and she sometimes decrees, indeed, that her reasons shall not be ours."
Chauncey Wright,
"The questions of philosophy proper are human desires and fears and aspirations - human emotions - taking an intellectual form."
Chauncey Wright,
"In the end, it doesn't really matter what you paint. It’s all just a routine to connect yourself finally with other people."
Chris Ofili,
"A strange mixture of fear and joy comes with driving off from the hospital with your firstborn in the vehicle. There's a powerful sense of transition and new beginning, and yet fear as well. It's a fear closely attached to the question, "What do I do with this thing?" It's a healthy fear born out of an awareness of the fragility of new life."
Chris Seidman,
"The hidden child wants to be able to participate and to co-create in art, rather than being simply an admiring viewer."
Christian Morgenstern, 1871-1914
"We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them."
Christian Nestell Bovee,
"For humanism also appeals to man as man. It seeks to liberate the universal qualities of human nature from the narrow limitations of blood and soil and class and to create a common language and a common culture in which men can realize their common humanity."
Christopher Dawson,
"Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature."
Cicero, 106-43 BCE
"To say that God made the universe gives us no explanation of the beginnings of things. If we are told that God made the universe, the question immediately arises: Who made God? Did he always exist, or was there some power back of that? Did he create matter out of nothing, or is his existence coextensive with matter? The problem is still there. What is the origin of it all? If, on the other hand, one says that the universe was not made by God, that it always existed, he has the same difficulty to confront. To say that the universe was here last year, or millions of years ago, does not explain its origin. This is still a mystery. As to the question of the origin of things, man can only wonder and doubt and guess."
Clarence Seward Darrow,
"You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free."
Clarence Seward Darrow,
"A prison is confining to the body, but whether it affects the mind, depends entirely upon the mind."
Clarence Seward Darrow,
"Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas. So does whiskey."
Clarence Seward Darrow,
"The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain."
Colin Wilson,
"The mind has exactly the same power as the hands; not merely to grasp the world, but to change it."
Colin Wilson, 1931-
"No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance."
Confucius, 551-479 BCE
"Everything (everyone) has it's beauty but not everyone sees it."
Confucius, 551-479 BCE
"We are all serving a life-sentence in the dungeon of self."
Cyril Vernon Connolly,
"The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason. The passionless cannot change history."
Czeslaw Milosz, 1911-2004
"The only justice is to follow the sincere intuition of the soul, angry or gentle. Anger is just, and pity is just, but judgement is never just."
D.H. Lawrence, 1885-1930
"The business of art is to reveal the relation between man and his environment."
D.H. Lawrence, 1885-1930
"Ours is an excessively conscious age. We know so much, we feel so little."
D.H. Lawrence, 1885-1930
"Reason is a supple nymph, and slippery as a fish by nature. She had as leave give her kiss to an absurdity any day, as to syllogistic truth. The absurdity may turn out truer."
D.H. Lawrence, 1885-1930
"The essential function of art is moral. But a passionate, implicit morality, not didactic. A morality which changes the blood, rather than the mind."
D.H. Lawrence, 1885-1930
"Men! The only animal in the world to fear."
D.H. Lawrence, 1885-1930
"One could laugh at the world better if it didn't mix tender kindliness with its brutality."
D.H. Lawrence, 1885-1930
"My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what our blood feels and believes and says, is always true. The intellect is only a bit and a bridle."
D.H. Lawrence, 1885-1930
"One sheds one's sicknesses in books - repeats and presents again one's emotions, to be master of them."
D.H. Lawrence, 1885-1930
"Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success."
Dale Carnegie, 1888-1955
"Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving."
Dale Carnegie, 1888-1955
"The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure."
Dale Carnegie, 1888-1955
"And of all the plagues with which mankind are cursed
Ecclesiastic tyranny's the worst."
Daniel Defoe,
"My work comes from inner disturbances, from seeing injustices and accidents and how they affect people's lives in a tragic way."
David Guterson, 1956-
"Some people carry their heart in their head and some carry their head in their heart. The trick is to keep them apart yet working together."
David Hare, 1947-
"Smiles are the language of love."
David Hare, 1947-
"Shadows sometimes people don't see shadows. The Chinese of course never paint them in pictures, oriental art never deals with shadow. But I noticed these shadows and I knew it meant it was sunny."
David Hockney, 1937
"Gentleness and peacefulness regulate our proceedings; theirs are dictated by fury. We employ reason, they accumulate faggots. They preach nothing but love, and breathe nothing but blood. Their words are humane, but their hearts are cruel."
Denis Diderot, 1713-1784
"That which you create in beauty and goodness and truth lives on for all time to come. Don't spend your life accumulating material objects that will only turn to dust and ashes."
Denis Waitley,
"Writing is really very easy. Tap a vein and bleed onto the page. Everything else is just technical."
Derrick Jensen, 1960-
"When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes."
Desiderius Erasmus, 1466-1536
"Humility is truth."
Desiderius Erasmus,
"A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically."
Diane Ackerman, 1948-
"Touch seems to be as essential as sunlight."
Diane Ackerman, 1948-
"There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us."
Don Marquis,
"Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun."
Don Marquis,
"The history of religion can be compared to a layer cake -- a mountain of layers of stale dogma, interspaced with the congealed blood of its victims, and overlaid with a sweetened opiate to make itself appealing to the gullible."
Donald Henry Gudehus,
"A humanist has four leading characteristics — curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race."
E.M. Forster, 1879-1970
"If God could tell the story of the Universe, the Universe would become fictitious."
E.M. Forster, 1879-1970
"Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it 'the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.' The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of 'Artist.'"
Edgar Allan Poe,
"Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality."
Edgar Allan Poe, 1809-1849
"It is all very well to copy what one sees, but it is far better to draw what one now only sees in one's memory. That is a transformation in which imagination collaborates with memory."
Edgar Degas, 1834-1917
"A kiss, when all is said, what is it? A rosy dot placed on the 'I' in loving; Tis a secret told to the mouth instead of to the ear."
Edmond Rostand, 1868-1918
"It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves."
Edmund Hillary, 1919-
"In my art I have tried to explain to myself life and its meaning. I have also tried to help others to clairfy their lives."
Edvard Munch, 1863-1944
"For as long as I can remember I have suffered from a deep feeling of anxiety which I have tried to express in my art."
Edvard Munch, 1863-1944
"Your face encompasses the beauty of the whole earth. Your lips, as red as ripening fruit, gently part as if in pain. It is the smile of a corpse. Now the hand of death touches life. The chain is forged that links the thousand families that are dead to the thousand generations to come."
Edvard Munch, 1863-1944
"It has always surprised me how little attention philosophers have paid to humor, since it is a more significant process of mind than reason. Reason can only sort out perceptions, but the humor process is involved in changing them."
Edward de Bono, 1933-
"Creativity is a great motivator because it makes people interested in what they are doing. Creativity gives hope that there can be a worthwhile idea. Creativity gives the possibility of some sort of achievement to everyone. Creativity makes life more fun and more interesting."
Edward de Bono, 1933-
"I believe that the great painters with their intellect as master have attempted to force this unwilling medium of paint and canvas into a record of their emotions. I find any digression from this large aim leads me to boredom."
Edward Hopper, 1882-1967
"One of the weaknesses of much abstract painting is the attempt to substitute the inventions of the intellect for a pristine imaginative conception."
Edward Hopper, 1882-1967
"No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination."
Edward Hopper, 1882-1967
"There is a destiny that makes us brothers;/ None goes his way alone; /All that we send into the lives of others/ Comes back into our own."
Edwin Markham, 1852-1940
"Love grows by giving. The love we give away is the only love we keep. The only way to retain love is to give it away."
Elbert Hubbard, 1859-1915
"Give us a religion that will help us to live -- we can die without assistance."
Elbert Hubbard,
"When certain unmarried men, who had lost their capacity to sin, sat indoors, breathing bad air, and passed resolutions about what was right and what wrong, making rules for the guidance of the people, instead of trusting to the natural, happy instincts of the individual, they ushered in the Dark Ages. These are the gentlemen who blocked human evolution absolutely for a thousand years."
Elbert Hubbard,
"Responsibility is the price of freedom."
Elbert Hubbard,
"I think isolation is one of the greatest problems, an ever-growing obstacle to political solidarity."
Elfriede Jelinek, 1946-
"Literature that keeps employing new linguistic and formal modes of expression to draft a panorama of society as a whole while at the same time exposing it, tearing the masks from its face - for me that would be deserving of an award."
Elfriede Jelinek,
"To devastate by language, to blow up the word and with it the world."
Emile Cioran, 1911-1995
"We are born to exist, not to know, to be, not to assert ourselves."
Emile Cioran, 1911-1995
"There is no means of proving it is preferable to be than not to be."
Emile Cioran, 1911-1995
"Philosophy: Impersonal anxiety; refuge among anemic ideas."
Emile Cioran, 1911-1995
"Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without words, and never stops at all."
Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886
"He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust."
Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886
"Mankind has been punished long and heavily for having created its gods; nothing but pain and persecution have been man's lot since gods began. There is but one way out of this blunder: Man must break his fetters which have chained him to the gates of heaven and hell, so that he can begin to fashion out of his reawakened and illumined consciousness a new world upon earth."
Emma Goldman,
"Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; Or he can, but does not want to; Or he cannot and does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. But, if God both can and wants to abolish evil, then how come evil is in the world?"
Epicurus,
"A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business."
Eric Hoffer, 1902-83
"It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate."
Eric Hoffer,
"The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not."
Eric Hoffer,
"To know a person’s religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance."
Eric Hoffer,
"There are no chaste minds. Minds copulate wherever they meet."
Eric Hoffer,
"A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves. The fanatical believer is not conscious of his envy, malice, pettiness and dishonesty. There is a wall of words between his consciousness and his real self."
Eric Hoffer,
"In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead."
Erich Fromm, 1900-1980
"Conditions for creativity are to be puzzled; to concentrate; to accept conflict and tension; to be born everyday; to feel a sense of self."
Erich Fromm, 1900-1980
"Question everything. Every stripe, every star, every word spoken. Everything."
Ernest Gaines, 1933-
"I don't want life to imitate art. I want life to be art."
Ernst Fischer, 1899-1972
"In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it."
Ernst Fischer,
|
|
Quotations 1 to 200 of 790