Ryan Cain > Ryan's Quotes

“Every person passing through this life will unknowingly leave something and take something away. Most of this “something” cannot be seen or heard or numbered or scientifically detected or counted. It’s what we leave in the minds of other people and what they leave in ours. Memory. The census doesn’t count it. Nothing counts without it.”
― Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

“I never met another man I'd rather be. And even if that's a delusion, it's a lucky one.”
― Charles Bukowski

“I once lay in a
white hospital
for the dying and the dying
self, where some god pissed a rain of
reason to make things grow
only to die, where on my knees
I prayed for LIGHT,
I prayed for l*i*g*h*t,
and praying
crawled like a blind slug into the
web
where threads of wind stuck against my mind
and I died of pity
for Man, for myself,
on a cross without nails,
watching in fear as
the pig belches in his sty, farts,
blinks and eats.”
― Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last

“But I always liked side-paths, little dark back-alleys behind the main road- there one finds adventures and surprises, and precious metal in the dirt.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Above all, avoid lies, all lies, especially the lie to yourself. Keep watch on your own lie and examine it every hour, every minute. And avoid contempt, both of others and of yourself: what seems bad to you in yourself is purified by the very fact that you have noticed it in yourself. And avoid fear, though fear is simply the consequence of every lie. Never be frightened at your own faintheartedness in attaining love, and meanwhile do not even be very frightened by your own bad acts.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we refuse to see it.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Man, do not pride yourself on your superiority to the animals, for they are without sin, while you, with all your greatness, you defile the earth wherever you appear and leave an ignoble trail behind you -- and that is true, alas, for almost every one of us!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Everything passes, only truth remains.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Being at a loss to resolve these questions, I am resolved to leave them without any resolution.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Love children especially, for they too are sinless like the angels; they live to soften and purify our hearts and, as it were, to guide us.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“If he's honest, he'll steal; if he's human, he'll murder; if he's faithful, he'll deceive.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“But destiny will be accomplished, and the best man will hold his ground while the undeserving one will vanish into his back-alley for ever - his filthy back-alley, his beloved back-alley, where he is at home and where he will sink in filth and stench at his own free will with enjoyment.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Tragic phrases comfort the heart… Without them, sorrow would be too heavy for men to bear.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.”
― Jack Kerouac

“This is my last message to you: in sorrow, seek happiness.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“There is a remarkable picture called 'Contemplation.' It shows a forest in winter and on a roadway through the forest, in absolute solitude, stands a peasant in a torn kaftan and bark shoes. he stands, as it were, lost in thought. Yet he is not thinking: he is "contemplating." If anyone touched him he would start and look bewildered. It's true he would come to himself immediately; but if he were asked what he had been thinking about, he would remember nothing. Yet probably he has hidden within himself, the impression which dominated him during that period of contemplation. Those impressions are dear to him and he probably hoards them imperceptibly, and even unconsciously. How and why, of course, he does not know. He may suddenly, after hoarding impressions for many years, abandon everything and go off to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage. Or he may suddenly set fire to his native village. Or he may do both.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“who wishes to fight must first count the cost”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good help to you nevertheless
And filter and fiber your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop some where waiting for you”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“Hide-and-seek, grown-up style. Wanting to hide. Needing to be sought. Confused about being found.”
― Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things

“Yelling at living things does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts...”
― Robert Fulghum

“Well, as you can plainly see, the possibilities are endless like meandering paths in a great big beautiful garden.”
― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

“All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“here she is, all mine, trying her best to give me all she can. How could I ever hurt her? But I didn’t understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair.”
― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

“He had never regarded other men as anything but puppets of a sort, created to fill up an empty world. He divided them into two classes: those he greeted because some chance had put him in contact with them, and those he did not greet. But both these categories of individuals were equally insignificant in his eyes.

("An Old Man")”
― Guy de Maupassant

“I don’t have a photograph, but you can have my footprints. They’re upstairs in my socks.”
― Groucho Marx

“We waited and waited. All of us. Didn't the shrink know that waiting was one of the things that drove people crazy? People waited all their lives. They waited to live, they waited to die. They waited in line to buy toilet paper. They waited in line for money. And if they didn't have any money they waited in longer lines. You waited to go to sleep and then you waited to awaken. You waited to get married and you waited to get divorced. You waited for it to rain, you waited for it to stop. You waited to eat and then you waited to eat again. You waited in a shrink's office with a bunch of psychos and you wondered if you were one.”
― Charles Bukowski, Pulp: Charles Bukowski's Final Hardboiled Noir Comedy – Lady Death, Aliens, and the Absurd