André Prado > André's Quotes

“É que as nódoas de sangue quando caem no chão não têm forma geométrica. As agonias da paixão, do desespero e do ciúme ardente quando coam num sangue tropical não se derretem em alexandrinos, não se modulam nas falas banais dessa poesia de convenção que se chama-conveniências dramáticas.”
― Álvares de Azevedo, Macário

“I saw what I saw, I heard what I heard, and my soul sickened at it; and yet now when that sight has faded from my eyes, I ask myself if I believe it, and I cannot answer.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Tales of Terror: Penguin Classics

“With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two. I say two, because the state of my own knowledge does not pass beyond that point. Others will follow, others will outstrip me on the same lines; and I hazard the guess that man will be ultimately known for a mere polity of multifarious, incongruous and independent denizens.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

“I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

“It is when suffering finds a voice and
sets our nerves quivering that this pity comes troubling us.”
― H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau

“The crying sounded even louder out of doors. It was as if all the pain
in the world had found a voice”
― H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau

“Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test reality we must see it on the tight rope. When the verities become acrobats, we can judge them.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Há homens que da simples contradita do adversário concluem pela incompetência dele.”
― Machado de Assis, Obras Completas de Machado de Assis VI: Crônica

“Eu queria um dia escrever um livro. Eu não queria plantar uma árvore. Não queria um filho. Queria só um livro. Queria ler um livro que eu mesmo escrevesse. Um escritor disse uma coisa um dia. Eu não sei quem ele era. Só ouvi alguém dizer o que ele teria dito. Parecia arrogância, mas não era. Era auto-suficiência. Parece que perguntaram para ele o que ele lia, ou o quê ele estava lendo. “Quando quero ler um livro, eu mesmo o escrevo”. Eu queria ter dito isso. Eu queria poder escrever. Mas em mim só encontro o silêncio. E por isso, eu não sei escrever. Escrever, é claro que eu sei. Só não sei escrever um livro. Não consigo encontrar as palavras. Não consigo encontrar as palavras nas palavras. Só encontro minha voz, no que penso. Mas o que eu penso, ninguém ouve. O que eu penso é silêncio. Então eu me calo. O silêncio é minha voz.
O silencio é a voz que eu calo.
O silêncio é a voz que eu guardo.
O silêncio, é lá onde eu moro.
O silêncio sou eu.”
― Lourenço Mutarelli, O Cheiro do Ralo

“Terminar um livro é uma mistura de alegria e tristeza.
Uma realização acompanhada de vazio.”
― Lourenço Mutarelli, O grifo de Abdera

“All is laughter and dust. And all is nothing,
since out of unreason comes all that is.”
― Glykon

“Quem não gosta de estar sozinho é uma péssima companhia.”
― Gonçalo M. Tavares

“O Senhor Valéry era pequenino, mas dava muitos saltos.
Ele explicava:
-Sou igual às pessoas altas só que por menos tempo.”
― Gonçalo M. Tavares, O Senhor Valéry

“Uma galinha pensava tanto e era tão culta que ganhou uma obstrução interior, deixando de pôr ovos. Mataram-na no dia seguinte.”
― Gonçalo M. Tavares

“Mas o que proponho não é que se pense ilogicamente sobre uma coisa lógica, mas sim que se pense logicamente sobre uma coisa ilógica.”
― Gonçalo M. Tavares, O Torcicologologista, Excelência

“já percebi que Vossa Excelência pensa como alguém que está atrasado um século nas ideias e mesmo assim vai comprar uns binóculos para ver mais para trás”
― Gonçalo M. Tavares, O Torcicologologista, Excelência

“Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.”
― Rumi

“The acceleration of contemporary life also plays a role in this lack of being. The society of laboring and achievement is not a free society. It generates new constraints. Ultimately, the dialectic of master and slave does not yield a society where everyone is free and capable of leisure, too. Rather, it leads to a society of work in which the master himself has become a laboring slave. In this society of compulsion, everyone carries a work camp inside. This labor camp is defined by the fact that one is simultaneously prisoner and guard, victim and perpetrator. One exploits oneself. It means that exploitation is possible even without domination.”
― Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society

“A novel is never anything but a philosophy expressed in images. And in a good novel the philosophy has disappeared into the images.”
― Albert Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays

“I catch myself carefully scrutinizing the loved body (like the narrator watching Albertine asleep). To scrutinize means to search: I am searching the other's body, as if I wanted to see what was inside it, as if the mechanical cause of my desire were in the adverse body (I am like those children who take a clock apart in order to find out what time is). This operation is conducted in a cold and astonished fashion; I am calm, attentive, as if I were confronted by a strange insect of which I am suddenly no longer afraid. Certain parts of the body are particularly appropriate to this observation: eyelashes, nails, roots of the hair, the incomplete objects. It is obvious that I am then in the process of fetishizing a corpse. As is proved by the fact that if the body I am scrutinizing happens to emerge from its inertia, if it begins doing something, my desire changes; if for instance I see the other thinking, my desire ceases to be perverse, it again becomes imaginary, I return to an Image, to a Whole: once again, I love.”
― Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

“Am I in love? --yes, since I am waiting. The other one never waits. Sometimes I want to play the part of the one who doesn't wait; I try to busy myself elsewhere, to arrive late; but I always lose at this game. Whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time. The lover's fatal identity is precisely this: I am the one who waits.”
― Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

“The lover's fatal identity is precisely this: I am the one who waits.”
― Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

“It's enough that if I am rich in anything, it is in perplexities rather then in certaintes.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“On Drinking Alone by Moonlight


Here are flowers and here is wine,
But where’s a friend with me to join
Hand in hand and heart to heart
In one full cup before we part?

Rather than to drink alone,
I’ll make bold to ask the moon
To condescend to lend her face
The hour and the scene to grace.

Lo, she answers, and she brings
My shadow on her silver wings;
That makes three, and we shall be.
I ween, a merry company

The modest moon declines the cup,
But shadow promptly takes it up,
And when I dance my shadow fleet
Keeps measure with my flying feet.

But though the moon declines to tipple
She dances in yon shining ripple,
And when I sing, my festive song,
The echoes of the moon prolong.

Say, when shall we next meet together?
Surely not in cloudy weather,
For you my boon companions dear
Come only when the sky is clear.”
― Li Po, The Works Of Li Po: The Chinese Poet