Michael > Michael's Quotes

“Man is a microcosm, or a little world, because he is an extract from all the stars and planets of the whole firmament, from the earth and the elements; and so he is their quintessence.”
― Paracelsus

“Every man's memory is his private literature.”
― Aldous Huxley

“Meow” means “woof” in cat.”
― George Carlin

“Faith begins precisely where thinking leaves off”
― Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.”
― Aldous Huxley

“We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies—all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.”
― Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

“Don't limit a child to your own learning, for she was born in another time.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.”
― Blaise Pascal

“There is a Beautiful Creature
Living in a hole you have dug.

So at night
I set fruit and grains
And little pots of wine and milk
Besides your soft earthen mounds,

And I often sing.

But still, my dear,
You do not come out.

I have fallen in love with Someone
Who hides inside you.

We should talk about this problem--

Otherwise,
I will never leave you alone.”
― Hafiz, I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy

“And still, after all this time,
The sun never says to the earth,
"You owe Me."

Look what happens with
A love like that,
It lights the Whole Sky.”
― Hafiz

“I swear since seeing your face,
the whole world is fraud and fantasy
The garden is bewildered as to what is leaf or blossom
The distracted birds can't distinguish the bird seed from the snare”
― Jallaludin Rumi

“When I am with you, we stay up all night.
When you're not here, I can't go to sleep.
Praise God for those two insomnias!
And the difference between them.”
― Rumi

“The lover's ailment is separate from all other ailments: love is the astrolabe of the mysteries of God.”
― Rumi, A Year with Rumi: Daily Readings

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

“Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It's by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! I talk nonsense, therefore I'm human”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead

“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 Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“You are my Lord, because You have no need of my goodness.”
― St. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

“You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.”
― Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes

“Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“A poet, you see, is a light thing, and winged and holy, and cannot compose before he gets inspiration and loses control of his senses and his reason has deserted him.”
― Plato

“The Way is not in the sky; the Way is in the heart.”
― Gautama Buddha

“Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness.”
― Meister Eckhart

“I have such a fear of finding another like myself, and such a desire to find one! I am so utterly lonely, but I also have such a fear that my isolation be broken through, and I no longer be the head and ruler of my universe.”
― Anaïs Nin, House of Incest

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
― Mae West

“Nothing is safe from you. If I were to court a girl who lived on an iceberg in the middle of the ocean, sooner or later— probably sooner— I’d look up to see you swooping overhead on a broomstick. In fact, by now I’d be disappointed in you if I didn’t see you.”
“Are you off to the iceberg today?” Sophie retorted.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, Howl’s Moving Castle

“If God exists, I hope he has a good excuse.”
― Woody Allen

“XVII

Lady, i will touch you with my mind.
Touch you and touch and touch
until you give
me suddenly a smile,shyly obscene

(lady i will
touch you with my mind.)Touch
you,that is all,

lightly and you utterly will become
with infinite care

the poem which i do not write.”
― E. E. Cummings

“If curiosity killed the cat, it was satisfaction that brought it back.”
― Holly Black, Tithe