"The most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid."
— J.D. Salinger (Nine Stories)

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

"Even, she thought, even without the gift of witchsight, there was more beauty to be found in the world than could ever be snared in language or music. And with the sight..."
— Charles de Lint

"Não sou esnobe; eu simplesmente não estou interessado no que a maioria das pessoas tem pra dizer, ou no que elas desejam fazer - principalmente com o meu tempo"
— Charles Bukowski

"I give you five minutes to spare your blushes. here is the little bronze key that opens the ebony caskets on the mantle piece in the Louise-Phillipe room. In one of the caskets you will find a scorpion, in the other, a grasshopper, both very cleverly imitated in Japanese bronze: they will say yes or no for you. If you turn the scorpion round, that will mean to me, when I return that you have said yes. The grasshopper will mean no... The grasshopper, be careful of the grass hopper! A grasshopper does not only turn: it hops! It hops! And it hops jolly high!"
— Gaston Leroux

"He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man"
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

"Do you still think men love the way we do? No... men enjoy the happiness they feel. We can only enjoy the happiness we give. They are not capable of devoting themselves exclusively to one person. So to hope to be made happy by love is a certain cause of grief. "
— Madame de Rosemonde

"Your soul is a chosen landscape
Where charming masked and costumed figures go
Playing the lute and dancing and almost
Sad beneath their fantastic disguises.

All sing in a minor key
Of all-conquering love and careless fortune
They do not seem to believe in their happiness
And their song mingles with the moonlight.

The still moonlight, sad and beautiful,
Which gives the birds to dream in the trees
And makes the fountain sprays sob in ecstasy,
The tall, slender fountain sprays among the marble statues."
— Paul Verlaine

""In the years afterward, I fled whenever somebody began to understand me. That has subsided. But one thing remained: I don't want anybody to understand me completely. I want to go through life unknown. The blindness of others is my safety and my freedom."

"
— Pascal Mercier

"Me he refugiado en el saber y así he perdido mi alma.
El dios de Livia"
— Israel Centeno

"When one woman strikes at the heart of another, she seldom misses, and the wound is invariably fatal. "
— Marquise de Merteuil

"Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleance me in the great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole."
— Oscar Wilde (De Profundis)

"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

"--¿Qué es ser hombre, para vos?
--Es muchas cosas, pero para mí... bueno, lo más lindo del hombre es eso, ser lindo, fuerte, pero sin hacer alharaca de fuerza, y que va avanzando seguro. Que camine seguro, como mi mozo, que hable sin miedo, que sepa lo que quiere, adonde va, sin miedo de nada."
— Manuel Puig

"En el mundo habia gente tan parecida entre si que se los podria tomar por padres e hijos. Pero dificilmente existieran muchos en el mundo. Ta vez hubiera un solo hombres que pudiera corresponderse con una muchacha y una sola joven que combinara con un hombre. Solo uno para algun otro; y tal vez en todo el mundo una sola pareja posible. Viven como extranos, sin supone ningun tipo de lazo entre ellos y hasta ignorantes de la existencia del otro.
Por casualidad suben a mismo tren, se reunen por primera vez y probablemente nunca vuelvan a encontrarse. Treinta minutos en el curso de toda una vida. Se separan sin decirse una palabra. Habiendo estado sentados uno al lado del otro, sin mirarse, sin darse cuenta del parecido, se alejan siendo parte de un milagro del que no tomaron conciencia.
Y el unico admirado por la rareza de todo eso es un extrano que se pregunta si, al ser un accidental testigo no estara participando de un milagro."
— Yasunari Kawabata

"Suara hati adalah tempat suci yang hanya bisa dimasuki Tuhan, hakim kita."
— Felicite Robert de Lamennais

"You see, I have no intention of breaking down her prodigiousness. I want her to believe in God and virtue and the sanctity of marriage and still not be able to stop herself. I want the excitement of watching her betray everything that's most important to her."
— Vicomte de Valmont

"- Creo que hay que cambiar la mano de las recetas para el exito o el triunfo...Habria que escribir un libro util, al alcance de todos, de instrucciones para la derrota. Eso...porqueyo nole puedo enseniar a nadie a ganar al ajedrez ni a nada. Tendria que ser una especie de recetario del perdedor vocacional.Porque hoy,a quien le vas a enseniar a ganar?
Y ya no hablaba de ajedrez, de truco,de gallo o de como pasarde cadete a jefe de seccion sin escalas. Hablaba de todo y algo mas:
- Hay que enseniar a perder, viejo: con altura, con elegancia, con conviccion.Hay que escribir un Dale Carnegieal reves:"Como perder serguro" o "Derrotese usted mismo en los momentos libres", algo asi... Y seria un exito, porque le hablaria a la gente de lo que conoce. Eso necesitamos: un manual de perdedores.
Y se tomo un mate frio, olvidado sobre la mesa, como si con eso subrayara algo de lo dicho,una verdad berreta, pero suya."
— SASTURAIN JUAN

"You'll find the shame is like the pain, you only feel it once. "
— Marquise de Merteuil

"No, no, you made an accusation and you must allow me the opportunity to defend myself! Now, I'm not going to deny that I was aware of your beauty. But the point is, this has nothing to do with your beauty. As I got to know you, I began to realize that beauty was the least of your qualities. I became fascinated by your goodness. I was drawn in by it. I didn't understand what was happening to me. And it was only when I began to feel actual, physical pain every time you left the room that it finally dawned on me: I was in love, for the first time in my life. I knew it was hopeless, but that didn't matter to me. And it's not that I want to have you. All I want is to deserve you. Tell me what to do. Show me how to behave. I'll do anything you say. "
— Vicomte de Valmont

"When I came out into society I was 15. I already knew that the role I was condemned to, namely to keep quiet and do what I was told, gave me the perfect opportunity to listen and observe. Not to what people told me, which naturally was of no interest, but to whatever it was they were trying to hide. I practiced detachment. I learned how to look cheerful while under the table I stuck a fork into the back of my hand. I became a virtuoso of deceit. It wasn't pleasure I was afer, it was knowledge. I consulted the strictest moralists to learn how to appear, philosophers to find out what to think, and novelists to see what I could get away with, and in the end, I distilled everything to one wonderfully simple principle: win or die. "
— Marquise de Merteuil

"Well, I had no choice, did I? I'm a woman. Women are obliged to be far more skillful than men. You can ruin our reputation and our life with a few well-chosen words. So, of course, I had to invent, not only myself, but ways of escape no one has every thought of before. And I've succeeded because I've always known I was born to dominate your sex and avenge my own. "
— Marquise de Merteuil

"I want you to tell her that I cannot explain why I broke with her as I did. But since then my life has been worth nothing. I pushed the blade in deeper than you just have, my boy. Tell her it is lucky for her now that I have gone. That I'm glad not to have to live without her. Tell her her love was the only real happiness I have ever known."
— Vicomte de Valmont

"Comer sin medida fue siempre su único modo de llorar, y nunca la había visto hacerlo con tanta pesadumbre"
— Gabriel García Márquez

"Cualquier ficción no es más que una realidad en espera de su legítimo dueño."
— Hector Domingo (Bitácoras de Soledad)

"Você baba quando está dormindo"
— O Ladrão de Raios

"-Si elle partage vos sentiments? Quelle différence cela fait-il? Achetez-la, quoi qu'il en soit!

Hélicon secoua la tête.

-On peut acheter de l'or brilliant comme le soleil, et des diamants à l'éclat lunaire. Mais on ne peut pas acheter le soleil, ni posséder la lune."
— David Gemmel

"Guilt and misery shrink, by a natural instinct, from public notice: they court privacy and solitude: and even in their choice of a grave will sometimes sequester themselves from the general population of the churchyard, as if declining to claim fellowship with the great family of man; thus, in a symbolic language universally understood, seeking (in the affecting language of Mr. Wordsworth)

’ Humbly to express
A penitential loneliness.’
"
— Thomas De Quincey

"La mujer buena es mala cosa, y no hay casi ninguna buena."
— Bernard de Morlas, monje de Cluny (siglo XII)

"feliz num mundo próprio de realidades simples"
— Gabriel García Márquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude)

"Human existence being an hallucination containing in itself the secondary hallucinations of day and night (the latter an insanitary condition of the atmosphere due to accretions of black air) it ill becomes any man of sense to be concerned at the illusory approach of the supreme hallucination known as death."
— de Selby

"gouverner l esprit des autres, et non faire le salut de son âme, ni rechercher le vrai ou le beau."
— Regis Debray

"esse cara é legal. ele se matou e a seu pai, sua mãe, e à mulher, mas não atirou nos três filhos nem no cachorro. um dos melhores poetas desde Baudelaire"
— Charles Bukowski

"Erik, Erik! I saved your life! Remember? You were scentenced to death! But for me you would be dead by now. "
— Gaston Leroux

""Lorsque tu verras une bonne
D'enfants, et non autre personne,
Assise au milieu d'un tender
Ou wagon de chemin de fer,
Découvres-toi sur son passage,
Salut à son noble visage !
Moralité
A bonne en tender, salut. "

(Fables de Joinville)"
— Allais a

"No iron can pierce the heart with such force as a period put just at the right place."
— Isaac Babel (The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel)

"When ignorance reigns in society and disorder in the minds of men, laws are multiplied, legislation is expected to do everything, and each fresh law being a fresh miscalculation, men are continually led to demand from it what can proceed only from themselves, from their own education and their own morality."
— French Jurist, Dalloy

"Nikmatilah hidup anda tanpa membanding-bandingkannya dengan hidup orang lain."
— Marquis de Condorcet

""Ma leg mai ales de fiintele care n-au nevoie de mine si pe care deodata le inlantui prin cea mai puternica legatura. Sunt gata sa dau totul cui nu cere nimic, dar nu vreau sa cedez nimic cui asteapta totul de la celalalt.""
— Pascal Bruckner

"Put black on white."
— Maupassant(de)/Guy

"I promised her my eternal love, and I actually thought that I meant it for a couple of hours."
— Vicomte de Valmont

"I've always known that I was born to dominate your sex and avenge my own."
— Marquise de Merteuil

"When it comes to marriage, one man is as good as the next. And even the least accommodating is less trouble than a mother. "
— Marquise de Merteuil

""Você baba quando está dormindo""
— Annabeth O Ladrão de Raios

""La mujer buena es mala cosa, y no hay casi ninguna buena"."
— Bernard de Morlas, monje de Cluny (siglo XII)