Smalharbi > Smalharbi's Quotes

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don't have to say anything”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“War doesn't negate decency. It demands it, even more than in times of peace." - Baba”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“Sad stories make good books”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

“There’s something excruciating about this part. Strangers, or, even worse, friends, crouch at the children’s knees, touching them, hugging them, stressed faces one after another pressing into theirs, faces like caricatures. There is the awkwardness of people feeling the need to say something when there is nothing to say. Nothing.”
― A.M. Homes, May We Be Forgiven

“More and more, as I think about history,” he pondered, “I am convinced that everything that is worth while in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring, critical spirit, and that the preservation of this spirit is more important than any social system whatsoever. But the men of ritual and the men of barbarism are capable of shutting up the men of science and of silencing them forever.”
― Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here

“Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.”
― Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here

“Everything is nothing, with a twist.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“I have so much to say to you that I am afraid I shall tell you nothing.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“We live as we dream--alone....”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“I don't like work--no man does--but I like what is in the work--the chance to find yourself. Your own reality--for yourself not for others--what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“Your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“We live as we dream - alone. While the dream disappears, the life continues painfully.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“He struggled with himself, too. I saw it -- I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appals me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies - which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world - what I want to forget.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you've made, and there's this panic because you don't know yet the scale of disaster you've left yourself open to.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“It never occurred to me that our lives, until then so closely interwoven, could unravel and separate over a thing like that. But the fact was, I suppose, there were powerful tides tugging us apart by then, and it only needed something like that to finish the task. If we'd understood that back then-who knows?-maybe we'd have kept a tighter hold of one another.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“You say you’re sure? Sure that you’re in love? How can you know it? You think love is so simple? ”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“A part of us stayed like that: fearful of the world around us, and-no matter how much we despised ourselves for it-unable quite to let each other go.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“May your sky always be clear, may your dear smile always be bright and happy, and may you be for ever blessed for that moment of bliss and happiness which you gave to another lonely and grateful heart. Isn't such a moment sufficient for the whole of one's life?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

“Your hand is cold, mine burns like fire. How blind you are, Nastenka!”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights

“There is something at the bottom of every new human thought, every thought of genius, or even every earnest thought that springs up in any brain, which can never be communicated to others, even if one were to write volumes about it and were explaining one's idea for thirty-five years; there's something left which cannot be induced to emerge from your brain, and remains with you forever; and with it you will die, without communicating to anyone perhaps the most important of your ideas.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot