Lan > Lan's Quotes

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Thus it is that no cruelty whatsoever passes by without impact. Thus it is that we always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“Being a nerd, which is to say going too far and caring too much about a subject, is the best way to make friends I know.”
― Sarah Vowell, The Partly Cloudy Patriot

“Some things you know all your life. They are so simple and true they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme...they must be naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.”
― Philip Levine

“If we were all to sit in a circle and confess our sins, we would laugh at each other for lack of originality. —Kahlil Gibran”
― Kahlil Gibran

“You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“Perhaps man has a hundred senses, and when he dies only the five senses that we know perish with him, and the other ninety-five remain alive.”
― Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard

“Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole.”
― Derek Walcott

“I am a tiny seashell
that has secretly drifted ashore
and carries the sound of the ocean
surging through its body.”
― Edward Hirsch

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that receives it.”
― Edith Wharton

“Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.”
― Edith Wharton, Artemis to Actaeon and Other Verses

“Comedy is the blues for people who can’t sing.”
― Chris Rock

“No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.”
― Alice Walker

“Every grain of experience is food for the greedy growing soul of the artist.”
― Anthony Burgess

“Is it better for a man to have chosen evil than to have good imposed upon him?”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“We can destroy what we have written, but we cannot unwrite it.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better.”
― Victor Hugo