Sofie > Sofie's Quotes

“Lingering is so very lonely when one lingers all alone.”
― Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan

“None but a poet can understand a poet; none but a romantic spirit transported with poetry and consecrated in the Holy of Holies an comprehend what the ordained utters out of his inspiration.”
― E.T.A. Hoffmann

“He knew everything there was to know about literature, except how to enjoy it”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“Here. All of you. And you, doorkeeper. No one is to be let out of the house today. And anyone I catch talking about this young lady will be first beaten to death and then burned alive and after that be kept on bread and water for six weeks. There.”
― C.S. Lewis, O cavalo e o seu rapaz

“I think it's very pretty.
Can it be pretty if no one thinks it's pretty?
I think it's pretty.
If you're the only one?
That's pretty pretty.
And what about the boys? Don't you want them to think you're pretty?
I wouldn't want a boy to think I was pretty unless he was the kind of boy who thought I was pretty.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

“Coffee justifies the existence of the word 'aroma'.”
― Glen Duncan, I, Lucifer

“It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“Though it may be right to care more for the benefit of the many than for the indulgence of your own single self, when you consider that the many, and duty to them, only exist to you through your own existence, what can be said?”
― Thomas Hardy, Desperate Remedies

“Moi qui d'abord ne trouvais de goût qu'au passé, la subite saveur de l'instant m'a pu griser un jour, pensai-je, mais le futur désenchante l'heure présente, plus encore que le présent ne désenchanta le passé...”
― André Gide, The Immoralist

“When I got to the street, I walked boldly. But I was always accompanied by an agonizing thought: the fear that honest people may be thieves who have chosen a cleverer and safer way of stealing.”
― Jean Genet, Miracle of the Rose

“And my Black bird, still not quitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On that pallid bust -- still flitting through my dolorous domain;
But it cannot stop from gazing for it truly finds amazing
That, by artful paraphrasing, I such rhyming can sustain--
Notwithstanding my lost symbol I such rhyming still sustain--
Though I shan't try it again!”
― Gilbert Adair, A Void

“The Three Kinds of Pride are: (1) thinking I am better than the other(s); (2) thinking I am worse than the other(s); and (3) thinking I am just as good as the other(s).”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation

“Non, Thérèse, non, il n’est point de Dieu, la nature se suffit à elle-même ; elle n’a nullement besoin d’un auteur, cet auteur supposé n’est qu’une décomposition de ses propres forces”
― Donatien-Alphonse-François de Sade, Justine ou les malheurs de la vertu

“Birth is okay and death is okay, if we know that they are only concepts in our mind. Reality transcends both birth and death.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation

“Dear Mr Skully,

I have caught my neck in a mangle and will be indisposed for eternity.

Yours in death
S.D.”
― J.P. Donleavy, The Ginger Man

“If I have viewed them from a certain angle, it is because, seen from there, that is how they looked--which may be due to prismatic distortion, but which is therefore what they also are, though unaware of being it.”
― Jean Genet, Miracle of the Rose