Péter Horváth > Péter's Quotes

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“Knowledge is like a sphere; the greater its volume, the larger its contact with the unknown.”
― David Christian, Origin Story: A Big History of Everything

“In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present,—I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world? Or have I been made for this, to lie in the bed-clothes and keep myself warm?—But this is more pleasant.—Dost thou exist then to take thy pleasure, and not at all for action or exertion? Dost thou not see the little plants, the little birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees working together to put in order their several parts of the universe? And art thou unwilling to do the work of a human being, and dost thou not make haste to do that which, is according to thy nature? But it is necessary to take rest also.—It is necessary. However, Nature has fixed bounds to this too: she has fixed bounds to eating and drinking, and yet thou goest beyond these bounds, beyond what is sufficient; yet in thy acts it is not so, but thou stoppest short of what thou canst do. So thou lovest not thyself, for if thou didst, thou wouldst love thy nature and her will. But those who love their several arts exhaust themselves in working at them unwashed and without food; but thou valuest thy own nature less than the turner values the turning art, or the dancer the dancing art, or the lover of money values his money, or the vain-glorious man his little glory. And such men, when they have a violent affection to a thing, choose neither to eat nor to sleep rather than to perfect the things which they care for. But are the acts which concern society more vile in thy eyes and less worthy of thy labor?”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Our life is what our thoughts make it.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“No one can lose either the past or the future - how could anyone be deprived of what he does not possess? ... It is only the present moment of which either stands to be deprived: and if this is all he has, he cannot lose what he does not have.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what's left and live it properly. What doesn't transmit light creates its own darkness.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“A person's worth is measured by the worth of what he values.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“How nice -- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“It is just an illusion here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone, it is gone forever.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Truth is a matter of the imagination.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“There is neither source nor end, for all things are in the Center of Time. As all the stars may be reflected in a round raindrop falling in the night: so too do all the stars reflect the raindrop. There is neither darkness nor death, for all things are, in the Light of the Moment, and their end and their beginning are one.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“waste is the highest virtue one can achieve in an advanced capitalist society”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

“Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decreasing, regrets mounting.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

“Sometimes when I'm with you, I remember things I lost when I was your age. Like I remember the sound of the rain and the smell of the wind.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

“We keep moving. And as we do, the things around us, well, they disappear.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

“As time goes on, you'll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn't, doesn't. Time solves most things. And what time can't solve, you have to solve yourself.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

“I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests. The library was open, unending, free.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“I believed, and still do, that our bodies are our selves, that my soul is the voltage conducted through neurons and nerves, and that my spirit is my flesh.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“The enslaved were not bricks in your road, and their lives were not chapters in your redemptive history. They were people turned to fuel for the American machine.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“But race is the child of racism, not the father.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“Home is what you take with you, not what you leave behind.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“Time really is one big continuous cloth, no? We habitually cut out pieces of time to fit us, so we tend to fool ourselves into thinking that time is our size, but it really goes on and on.”
― Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase

“Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories.”
― Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase

“It is cognition that is the fantasy.... Everything I tell you now is mere words. Arrange them and rearrange them as I might, I will never be able to explain to you the form of Will... My explanation would only show the correlation between myself and that Will by means of a correlation on the verbal level. The negation of cognition thus correlates to the negation of language. For when those two pillars of Western humanism, individual cognition and evolutionary continuity, lose their meaning, language loses meaning. Existence ceases for the individuum as we know it, and all becomes chaos. You cease to be a unique entity unto yourself, but exist simply as chaos. And not just the chaos that is you; your chaos is also my chaos. To wit, existence is communication, and communication, existence.”
― Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase

“The song is over. But the melody lingers on.”
― Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase