Tomoka > Tomoka's Quotes

“The day the flesh shapes and the flesh the day shapes.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Caring too much for objects can destroy you. Only—if you care for a thing enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn’t it? And isn’t the whole point of things—beautiful things—that they connect you to some larger beauty?”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“Perhaps we can fly. All of us. How will we ever know unless we leap from some tall tower? No man ever truly knows what he can do unless he dares to leap.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

“Having a talent is not enough; one also requires your permission for it--right, my friends?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“Don’t you want to be alive before you die?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“That life - whatever else it is - is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn’t mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open. And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn’t touch.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“Are you happy here?" I said at last.
He considered this for a moment. "Not particularly," he said. "But you're not very happy where you are, either.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

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

“...the air a library and the record of every life lived, every sentence spoken, every word transmitted still reverberating within it.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“... a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“Where would you like to go, what would you really like to do with your life?

See Istanbul, Port Said, Nairobi, Budapest. Write a book. Smoke too many cigarettes. Fall off a cliff but get caught in a tree halfway down. Get shot at a few times in a dark alley on a Morrocan midnight. Love a beautiful woman.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”
― Albert Camus

“I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“I was thinking, "So, I’m Emperor, am I? What nonsense! But at least I'll be able to make people read my books now.”
― Robert Graves, I, Claudius

“He was always boasting of his ancestors, as stupid people do who are aware that they have done nothing themselves to boast about.”
― Robert Graves, I, Claudius

“What a man is begins to betray itself when his talent decreases—when he stops showing what he can do. Talent, too, is finery; finery, too, is a hiding place.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“He couldn’t stand to look at the truth, even now. All they were—all they had ever been—was a pair of sunflowers who each believed the other was the sun.”
― Micah Nemerever, These Violent Delights

“I hope you looked west while I was looking east, and that for a moment you met my eyes without knowing it. I know you never look away, ever when your eyes are closed, but I'm never certain you can see what's really there.
I miss you to pieces.
Yours Always
- J”
― Micah Nemerever, These Violent Delights

“Maybe living was no more than getting swept over a riverbed and eventually out to sea, no choices to make, only the vast, formless ocean ahead, the frothing waves, the lightless tomb of its depths.”
― Anthony Doerr, The Shell Collector

“Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.”
― Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune

“This wise man observed that wealth is a tool of freedom. But the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery.”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

“Police are inevitably corrupted. ... Police always observe that criminals prosper. It takes a pretty dull policeman to miss the fact that the position of authority is the most prosperous criminal position available.”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

“Most men go through life unchallenged, except at the final moment.”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

“Caution is the path to mediocrity. Gliding, passionless mediocrity is all that most people think they can achieve.”
― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

“Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class - whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.
- Politics as Repeat Phenomenon: Bene Gesserit Training Manual”
― Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

“The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion.”
― Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

“Good governance never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders.”
― Frank Herbert, Children of Dune