Nate's quotes

(showing 1-43 of 43)

"Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death."
— William S. Burroughs

tags: death, murder
128 people liked it

"Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing."
— William S. Burroughs

34 people liked it

"Love is a haunting melody that I have never mastered, and I fear I never will."
— William S. Burroughs

26 people liked it

"Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape. "
— William S. Burroughs

tags: burroughs, change, escape, inspirational
21 people liked it

"You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative"
— William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch: The Restored Text)

15 people liked it

"Unbeing dead isn't being alive."
— e.e. cummings

tags: death, life, poetry
389 people liked it

"The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

tags: forgetfulness, forgetting, happiness, memory
117 people liked it

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

tags: corruption, individuality, peer-pressure, youth
102 people liked it

"Faith: not wanting to know what the truth is."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

108 people liked it

"You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life."
— Albert Camus

tags: happiness, meaning-of-life
845 people liked it

"Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is."
— Albert Camus

tags: human-nature, man, mankind, philosophy
743 people liked it

"I know that two and two make four - and should be glad to prove it too if I could - though I must say if by any sort of process I could convert 2 and 2 into five it would give me much greater pleasure."
— George Gordon Byron

tags: logic, mathematics, miracles, mortality, probability
5 people liked it

"You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened."
— Jorge Luis Borges

49 people liked it

"Reality is not always probable, or likely."
— Jorge Luis Borges

tags: reality
18 people liked it

"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom."
— William Blake (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)

tags: wisdom
45 people liked it

"Life is more or less a lie, but then again, that's exactly the way we want it to be."
— Bob Dylan

tags: dylan, life, zen
62 people liked it

"I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both."
— Søren Kierkegaard

tags: life
41 people liked it

"If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!"
— Søren Kierkegaard

tags: life
20 people liked it

"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."
— Søren Kierkegaard

tags: future, life, past, reflection, understanding
154 people liked it

"In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant. . . . My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known- no wonder, then, that I return the love."
— Søren Kierkegaard

tags: depression
29 people liked it

"A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it's a joke."
— Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or 1: Kierkegaard's Writings, Vol. 3)

tags: humor
15 people liked it

"Many of us pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that we hurry past it."
— Søren Kierkegaard

tags: pleasure
13 people liked it

"The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you'll never have. - "
— Søren Kierkegaard

10 people liked it

"Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't so."
— Lemony Snicket (The Blank Book)

tags: understanding
103 people liked it

"If you understood everything I said, you’d be me"
— Miles Davis

tags: identity, understanding
7 people liked it

"I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion."
— Jack Kerouac

346 people liked it

"One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple."
— Jack Kerouac (The Dharma Bums)

tags: dharma, simplicity, writing
292 people liked it

"Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry."
— Jack Kerouac

189 people liked it

"I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference."
— Jack Kerouac

39 people liked it

"What's in store for me in the direction I don't take?"
— Jack Kerouac

38 people liked it

""As I grew older I became a drunk. Why? Because I like ecstasy of the mind.""
— Jack Kerouac

30 people liked it

"Bee, why are you staring at me? I am not a flower??"
— Jack Kerouac

19 people liked it

"His friends said, "Why do you have that ugly thing hanging there?" and Bull said, "I like it because it's ugly." All his life was in that line."
— Jack Kerouac (On the Road)

15 people liked it

"a sociable smile is nothing but a mouth full of teeth"
— Jack Kerouac

14 people liked it

"And I said, 'That last thing is what you can't get, Carlo. Nobody can get to that last thing. We keep on living in hopes of catching it once and for all.'"
— Jack Kerouac (On the Road)

tags: fragility, honesty, narrowness, uncertainty
10 people liked it

"As far as I'm concerned the only thing to do is sit in a room and get drunk"
— Jack Kerouac

13 people liked it

""What do you want out of life?" I asked, and I used to ask that all the time of girls.
"I don't know," she said. "Just wait on tables and try to get along." She yawned. I put my hand over her mouth and told her not to yawn. I tried to tell her how excited I was about life and the things we could do together; saying that, and planning to leave Denver in two days. She turned away wearily. We lay on our backs, looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when He made life so sad. "
— Jack Kerouac (On the Road)

11 people liked it

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