Sam Jannenga > Sam's Quotes

“L'enfer, c'est les autres.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Huis clos: suivi de Les Mouches

“There are seconds, they come only five or six at a time, and you suddenly feel the presence of eternal harmony, fully achieved. It is nothing earthly; not that it's heavenly, but man cannot endure it in his earthly state. One must change physically or die. The feeling is clear and indisputable. As if you suddenly sense the whole of nature and suddenly say: yes, this is true. God, when he was creating the world, said at the end of each day of creation: 'Yes, this is true, this is good.' This . . . this is not tenderheartedness, but simply joy. You don't forgive anything, because there is no longer anything to forgive. You don't really love — oh, what is here is higher than love! What's most frightening is that it's so terribly clear, and there's such joy. If it were longer than five seconds — the soul couldn't endure it and would vanish. In those five seconds I live my life through, and for them I would give my whole life, because it's worth it. To endure ten seconds one would have to change physically . . . .”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Demons

“The cure for unhappiness...It's this: What a person needs is always more than they say.”
― Avi

“Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go around looking for it, and I think it can be poisonous. I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, 'Please — a little less love, and a little more common decency'.”
― Kurt Vonnegut , Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!

“I didn't know what to think, but what I felt was magnetic and so big it ached like the moon had entered my chest and filled it up. The only think I could compare it to was the feeling I got one time when I walked from the peach stand and saw the sun spreading across the late afternoon, setting the top of the orchard on fire while darkness collected underneath. Silence had hovered over my head, beauty multiplying in the air, the trees so transparent I felt like I could see through t something pure inside them. My chest ached then, too, this very same way.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

“Je me presse de rire de tout, de peur d’être obligé d’en pleurer.”
― Beaumarchais, Le Barbier de Séville

“You have to believe it and you hate it. I don't have to and I think it's beautiful.”
― Katherine Paterson, Bridge to Terabithia

“Que ne peut l’amitié conduite par l’amour?”
― Racine, Andromaque

“I learned that the world has a soul, and that whoever understands that soul can also understand the language of things. I learned that many alchemists realized their destinies, and wound up discovering the Soul of the World, the Philosopher's Stone, and the Elixir of Life. But above all, I learned that these things are all so simple they could be written on the surface of an emerald.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“In the fire of his embrace, all that was her ceased to exist. Only what was God remained. I am. The cloisterbell, the voice of Christ. He spoke again: I am. She tried to obey but was frozen in beauty, like a fly trapped in amber. She could not move. Nothing exists apart from me. Self had been an illusion, a dream. God dreaming.”
― Mark Salzman, Lying Awake

“What does seem important? Bargaining in good faith with destiny.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!

“Speak in French when you can’t think of the English for a thing--
turn your toes out when you walk---
And remember who you are!”
― Lewis Carroll, Through The Looking Glass

“Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Sur quelque préférence une estime se fonde,
Et c'est n'estimer rien qu'estimer tout le monde.”
― Molière, The Misanthrope

“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“This was a little house, with a ceiling that kept getting higher and higher, a hot place with no windows. This was anger.”
― Helen Oyeyemi