John Beck > John's Quotes

“Life is a combination of magic and pasta.”
― Federico Fellini

“We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.”
― J. Robert Oppenheimer

“If the radiance of a thousand suns
Were to burst at once into the sky
That would be like the splendour of the Mighty One...
I am become Death,
The shatterer of worlds.

[Quoted from the Bhagavad Gita after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.]”
― J. Robert Oppenheimer

“Fiery the Angels rose, & as they rose deep thunder roll’d Around their shores, indignant burning with the fires of Orc.”
― William Blake, America: A Prophecy and Europe: A Prophecy: Facsimile Reproductions of Two Illuminated Books

“Le silence eternel des ces espaces infinis m'effraie - The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“I am a sick man... I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts. However, I don't know a fig about my sickness, and am not sure what it is that hurts me. I am not being treated and never have been, though I respect medicine and doctors. What's more, I am also superstitious in the extreme; well, at least enough to respect medicine. (I'm sufficiently educated not to be superstitious, but I am.) No, sir, I refuse to be treated out of wickedness. Now, you will certainly not be so good as to understand this. Well, sir, but I understand it. I will not, of course, be able to explain to you precisely who is going to suffer in this case from my wickedness; I know perfectly well that I will in no way “muck things up” for the doctors by not taking their treatment; I know better than anyone that by all this I am harming only myself and no one else. But still, if I don't get treated, it is out of wickedness. My liver hurts; well, then let it hurt even worse!”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

“Every night I cut out my heart. But in the morning it was full again”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“To every man his little cross. Till he dies. And is forgotten.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“I thought what I'd do was I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“A man’s fate is a man’s fate and life is but an illusion.”
― James Clavell, Shōgun, Volume 1

“A great many things are possible.” And to himself he added: But not practical.”
― Isaac Asimov, Prelude to Foundation

“Every day Lombardi heard Cox lecture on the meaning of character—“an integration of habits of conduct superimposed on temperament, the will exercised on disposition, thought, emotion and action.” It was man’s obligation, Cox said, to use his will “to elicit the right and good free actions and to refrain from wrong and evil actions.” While man was blessed with intellect and free will, he was ennobled only when he sublimated individual desires “to join others in pursuit of common good.” Cox lamented that the modern world was turning away from that notion, and “the vaunted liberty which was to make us free has eventuated in a more galling servitude to man’s lower nature.”
― David Maraniss, When Pride Still Mattered: A Life Of Vince Lombardi