Joy > Joy's Quotes

“Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“Can I see anothers woe,
And not be in sorrow too.
Can I see anothers grief,
And not seek for kind relief.”
― William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience

“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Je ne suis pas le Styx pour t'embrasser neuf fois.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal

“Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté.

(L'Invitation au Voyage)”
― Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal

“Some things are more precious because they don't last long.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“C'est tellement mystérieux, le pays des larmes.”
― Antoine De Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

“Mais les yeux sont aveugles. Il faut chercher avec le cœur.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso

“There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso

“Nessun maggior dolore
che ricordarsi del tempo felice
nella miseria...”
― Dante Alighieri , The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso

“Je préfère au constance, à l’opium, au nuits,
L’élixir de ta bouche où l’amour se pavane ;
Quand vers toi mes désirs partent en caravane,
Tes yeux sont la citerne où boivent mes ennuis.”
― Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal

“One likes to think there's something in it, that old platitude amor vincit omnia. But if I've learned one thing in my short sad life, it is that that particular platitude is a lie. Love doesn't conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“He had preserved the best part of her and made it his own: the principle of her scent.”
― Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

“Death is the mother of beauty,” said Henry. “And what is beauty?” “Terror.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“And on their naked limbs the flowry roof/Show'r'd Rose, which the Morn repair'd.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“And I can't be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?”
― T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday

“Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;”
― T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday

“Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power”
― T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday

“You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“How tremendous the agony of unmade decisions.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“There is no comfort like complicity.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“The funeral liturgy says that life is changed and not ended. I've always loved that, if that's of any help.”
― Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Fleabag: The Scriptures

“...things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realize that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“The axiom of equality states that x always equals x: it assumes that if you have a conceptual thing named x, that it must always be equivalent to itself, that it has a uniqueness about it, that it is in possession of something so irreducible that we must assume it is absolutely, unchangeably equivalent to itself for all time, that its very elementalness can never be altered. But it is impossible to prove. Always, absolutes, nevers: these are the words, as much as numbers, that make up the world of mathematics. Not everyone liked the axiom of equality––Dr. Li had once called it coy and twee, a fan dance of an axiom––but he had always appreciated how elusive it was, how the beauty of the equation itself would always be frustrated by the attempts to prove it. It was the kind of axiom that could drive you mad, that could consume you, that could easily become an entire life.

But now he knows for certain how true the axiom is, because he himself––his very life––has proven it. The person I was will always be the person I am, he realizes. The context may have changed: he may be in this apartment, and he may have a job that he enjoys and that pays him well, and he may have parents and friends he loves. He may be respected; in court, he may even be feared. But fundamentally, he is the same person, a person who inspires disgust, a person meant to be hated.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life