Tom > Tom's Quotes

“This is the real secret of life -- to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”
― Alan Watts

“Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.”
― Alan Watts

“Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?”
― James Thurber

“The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it.”
― Anthony Burgess

“But it's the truth even if it didn't happen.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

“It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

“In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“These woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”
― Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

“A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“I'm going to marry my novels and have little short stories for children.”
― Jack Kerouac

“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.”
― Marcel Proust

“Like many intellectuals, he was incapable of saying a simple thing in a simple way”
― Marcel Proust

“Nobody's perfect. Well, there was this one guy, but we killed him....”
― Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal

“I love you above all things, even pie.”
― Christopher Moore, Fool

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions, when it ceases to be dangerous you don't want it.”
― Anthony Burgess

“And to the degree that the individual maintains a show before others that he himself does not believe, he can come to experience a special kind of alienation from self and a special kind of wariness of others.”
― Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

“Man is profoundly dependent on the reflection of himself in another man's soul, be it even the soul of an idiot.”
― Witold Gombrowicz, Ferdydurke

“Hell is—other people!”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit

“If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“I am going to outlive myself. Eat, sleep, sleep, eat. Exist slowly, softly, like these trees, like a puddle of water, like the red bench in the streetcar.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.”
― David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature

“Does a man of sense run after every silly tale of hobgoblins or fairies, and canvass particularly the evidence? I never knew anyone, that examined and deliberated about nonsense who did not believe it before the end of his enquiries.”
― David Hume, The Letters of David Hume

“And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment