Asaf Bartov > Asaf's Quotes

“Sometimes our light goes out, but is blown again into instant flame by an encounter with another human being.”
― Albert Schweitzer

“Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.”
― W.H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays

“Evil is unspectacular and always human,
And shares our bed and eats at our own table ....”
― W.H. Auden, Collected Poems

“Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”
― Malachy McCourt

“There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.”
― Frank Zappa

“Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.”
― Margaret Atwood, Surfacing

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.”
― Walker Evans

“I make not therefore my head a grave, but a treasure, of knowledge; I intend no Monopoly, but a community, in learning; I study not for my own sake only, but for theirs that study not for themselves.”
― Sir Thomas Browne

“As regards his health--and the rest of the things--the average man is what his environment and his superstitions have made him; and their function is to make him an ass. He can't add up three or four new circumstances together and perceive what they mean; it is beyond him. He is not capable of observing for himself; he has to get everything at second-hand. If what are miscalled the lower animals were as silly as man is, they would all perish from the earth in a year.”
― Mark Twain, The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

“An artist is identical with an anarchist,' he cried. 'You might transpose the words anywhere. An anarchist is an artist. The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything. He sees how much more valuable is one burst of blazing light, one peal of perfect thunder, than the mere common bodies of a few shapeless policemen. An artist disregards all governments, abolishes all conventions. The poet delights in disorder only. If it were not so, the most poetical thing in the world would be the Underground Railway.'
'So it is,' said Mr. Syme.
'Nonsense!' said Gregory, who was very rational when any one else attempted paradox.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

“Damn truth, always resisting simplicity.”
― John Green

“It is oddly ironic that capitalist archaeologists made the mode of production central to their definition of the Neolithic, and Marxist archaeologists ignored it.”
― David W. Anthony, The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World

“An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one.”
― George Mikes, How to Be an Alien: A Handbook for Beginners and Advanced Pupils

“Senescence begins
And middle-age ends
The day your descendants
Outnumber your friends”
― Ogden Nash

“The goal had been important only for the sake of finding the path to it.”
― Sten Nadolny, Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit

“To talk about the senselessness of the battle was to attribute sense to war itself.”
― Sten Nadolny, Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit

“And what hast thou gained by the government?" asked Ricote. "I have gained," said Sancho, "the knowledge that I am no good for governing,”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“The landlord replied he had no chickens, for the kites had stolen them.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“Between overstatement and understatement lies one hundred percent.”
― Sten Nadolny, Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit

“Learning and seeing are more important than education.”
― Sten Nadolny, Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.”
― Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals

“later that night
i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?

it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.”
― Warsan Shire

“Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one's first feeling, 'Thank God, even they aren't quite so bad as that,' or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything -- God and our friends and ourselves included -- as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?”
― Henry Ward Beecherr

“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”
― Toni Morrison

“I have never wished to cater to the crowd; for what I know they do not approve, and what they approve I do not know.”
― Epicurus

“It is not so much our friends' help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us.”
― Epicurus