Philippe Malzieu > Philippe's Quotes

“Humour is the courtesy of despair”
― Chris Marker

“In our veins the macaques'blood runs. If we often thought of it, we would end up resigning. no more theology, no more metaphysics, - to as much say more divagations, no more arrogance, no more disproportion, nothing...”
― EM CIORAN

“A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it is not open.”
― Frank Zappa

“Fatalisme: Systême affreux qui soumet tout à la nécessité, dans un monde réglé par les décrets immuables de la divinité, sans la volonté de laquelle rien ne peut arriver. Si tout était nécessaire, adieu le libre arbitre de l’homme, dont les prêtres ont si grand besoin pour pouvoir le damner.”
― Baron d'Holbach, La Théologie portative ou Dictionnaire abrégé de la religion chrétienne

“An alone man is always badly accompanied.”
― Paul Valéry, Dialogues

“All men are comedians, except maybe some actors.”
― Sacha Guitry, Mon père avait raison

“Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.”
― Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading

“How slow life is, how violent hope is.”
― Guillaume Apollinaire

“Nothing great in the world was accomplished without passion.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
― C.S. Lewis

“So,” he throttled shift knob into fifth gear half a block from a stop sign, “you’re from Great Britain.”

“Yes. England. The North. Sheffield.”

“Why you guys drive on the left?”

“Obviously, because it’s right.”

“I’m being serious.”

“Are you?”

“I’m askin, aren’t I?”

“I don’t know. Tradition, I suppose.”

“That’s a dumb-ass reason.”

“Then perhaps you should start driving on the left.”
― Kevin Cole

“Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.”
― Rumi

“Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“listen to me as one listens to the rain,
the years go by, the moments return,
do you hear the footsteps in the next room?
not here, not there: you hear them
in another time that is now,
listen to the footsteps of time,
inventor of places with no weight, nowhere,
listen to the rain running over the terrace,
the night is now more night in the grove,
lightning has nestled among the leaves,
a restless garden adrift-go in,
your shadow covers this page.”
― Octavio Paz

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

“Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations.”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti

“Joseph
Voilà c'que c'est, mon vieux Joseph
Que d'avoir pris la plus jolie
Parmi les filles de Galilée
Celle qu'on appelait Marie

Tu aurais pu, mon vieux Joseph
Prendre Sarah ou Déborah
Et rien ne serait arrivé
Mais tu as préféré Marie

Tu aurais pu, mon vieux Joseph
Rester chez toi, tailler ton bois
Plutôt que d'aller t'exiler
Et te cacher avec Marie

Tu aurais pu, mon vieux Joseph
Faire des petits avec Marie
Et leur apprendre ton métier
Comme ton père te l'avait appris

Pourquoi a-t-il fallu, Joseph
Que ton enfant, cet innocent
Ait eu ces étranges idées
Qui ont tant fait pleurer Marie

Parfois je pense à toi, Joseph
Mon pauvre ami, lorsque l'on rit
De toi qui n'avais demandé
Qu'à vivre heureux avec Marie”
― Georges Moustaki

“The Taliban’s discrimination against women is completely opposed to the practice of the Prophet and the conduct of the first ummah. The Taliban are typically fundamentalist, however, in their highly selective vision of religion (which reflects their narrow education in some of the madrasahs of Pakistan), which perverts the faith and turns it in the opposite direction of what was intended. Like all the major faiths, Muslim fundamentalists, in their struggle to survive, make religion a tool of oppression and even of violence.”
― Karen Armstrong, Islam: A Short History

“I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens.”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer

“I intend to live forever, or die trying.”
― Groucho Marx

“The truth can only be seen when you close your eyes to reason and surrender yourself to dreams.”
― André Breton

“I long ago abandoned myself to a blind lust for the written word. Literature is my sandbox. In it I play, build my forts and castles, spend glorious time.”
― Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman

“I am not proud, but I am happy; and happiness blinds, I think, more than pride.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“You can make anything by writing.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Peace begins with a smile..”
― Mother Teresa

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it--always.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville

“Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet