John M > John's Quotes

“It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own life and the lives of others yet remains totally incapable of seeing how much the whole tragedy originates in himself, and how he continually feeds it and keeps it going. Not consciously, of course—for consciously he is engaged in bewailing and cursing a faithless world that recedes further and further into the distance. Rather, it is an unconscious factor which spins the illusions that veil his world. And what is being spun is a cocoon, which in the end will completely envelop him.”
― C.G. Jung, Aion

“Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and its fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”
― William Wordsworth, Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

“Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.”
― Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill

“Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.”
― Wallace Stevens, Harmonium

“The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.”
― Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems

“In retrospect, though many were guilty, none was innocent.”
― A.J.P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War

“There is nothing nicer than nodding off while reading. Going fast asleep and then being woken by the crash of the book on the floor, then saying to yourself, well it doesn't matter much. An admirable feeling.”
― A J P Taylor

“The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“As for me, I would rather be a worm in a wild apple than a son of man. But we are what we are, and we might remember not to hate any person, for all are vicious; And not to be astonished at any evil, all are deserved; And not to fear death; it is the only way to be cleansed.”
― Robinson Jeffers, Robinson Jeffers: Selected Poems

“And she wanted to say not one thing, but everything. Little words that broke up the thought and dismembered it said nothing. “About life, about death; about Mrs. Ramsay”—no, she thought, one could say nothing to nobody. The urgency of the moment always missed its mark. Words fluttered sideways and struck the object inches too low. Then one gave it up; then the idea sunk back again; then one became like most middle-aged people, cautious, furtive, with wrinkles between the eyes and a look of perpetual apprehension. For how could one express in words these emotions of the body? express that emptiness there? (She was looking at the drawing-room steps; they looked extraordinarily empty.) It was one’s body feeling, not one’s mind. The physical sensations that went with the bare look of the steps had become suddenly extremely unpleasant. TO want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not to have—to want and want—how that wrung the heart, and wrung it again and again! Oh, Mrs. Ramsay! She called out silently, to that essence which sat by the boat, that abstract one made of her, that woman in grey, as if to abuse her for having gone, and then having gone, come back again. It seemed so safe, thinking of her. Ghost, air, nothingness, a thing you could play with easily and safely at any time of day or night, she had been that, and then suddenly she put her hand out and wrung the heart thus. Suddenly, the empty drawing-room steps, the frill of the chair inside, the puppy tumbling on the terrace, the whole wave and whisper of the garden became like curves and arabesques flourishing around a centre of complete emptiness.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“In the particular is contained the universal.”
― James Joyce

“Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting heaven
That seemed as though ice burned and was but the more ice,”
― W. B. Yeats

“Rose, oh pure contradiction, joy
of being No-one's sleep under so many
lids.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

“What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have........
.......
Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill.

~From "The Waking" by Theodore Roethke”
― Theodore Roethke

“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson on Self Reliance

“I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Be not the slave of your own past - plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Every artist was first an amateur.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Be good to your work, your word, and your friend.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Every wall is a door.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Your actions speak so loudly, I can not hear what you are saying.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“The committed student needs to be wide awake, to look and listen closely, to slow down, scrutinize and reflect. The language of poetry is so dense, so multivalent, that it demands a concentrated act of attention — and offers its greatest rewards only to those who reread.”
― Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading

“One cannot change, that is to say become a different person, while continuing to acquiesce to the feelings of the person one has ceased to be.”
― Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way

“Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.”
― Marcel Proust, Time Regained

“Illness is the most heeded of doctors: to kindness and wisdom we make promises only; pain we obey.”
― Marcel Proust, Sodom and Gomorrah