David > David's Quotes

“Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“For many have but one resource to sustain them in their misery, and that is to think, “Circumstances have been against me, I was worthy to be something much better than I have been. I admit I have never had a great love or a great friendship; but that is because I never met a man or a woman who were worthy of it; if I have not written any very good books, it is because I had not the leisure to do so; or, if I have had no children to whom I could devote myself it is because I did not find the man I could have lived with. So there remains within me a wide range of abilities, inclinations and potentialities, unused but perfectly viable, which endow me with a worthiness that could never be inferred from the mere history of my actions.” But in reality and for the existentialist, there is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving; there is no genius other than that which is expressed in works of art.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism

“Do not look for a sanctuary in anyone except your self.”
― Buddha Siddhartha Guatama Shakyamuni

“You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart.”
― Franz Kafka

“I just can't listen to any more Wagner, you know...I'm starting to get the urge to conquer Poland.”
― Woody Allen

“I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers
Could not, with all their quantity of love,
Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?...

'Swounds, show me what thou'lt do:
Woo't weep? woo't fight? woo't fast? woo't tear thyself?
Woo't drink up eisel? eat a crocodile?
I'll do't. Dost thou come here to whine?
To outface me with leaping in her grave?
Be buried quick with her, and so will I:
And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw
Millions of acres on us, till our ground,
Singeing his pate against the burning zone,
Make Ossa like a wart! Nay, an thou'lt mouth,
I'll rant as well as thou.”
― William Shakespeare

“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“I read," I say. "I study and read. I bet I've read everything you read. Don't think I haven't. I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM-drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it." My instincts concerning syntax and mechanics are better than your own, I can tell, with all due respect. But it transcends the mechanics. I'm not a machine. I feel and believe. I have opinions. Some of them are interesting. I could, if you'd let me, talk and talk.”
― David Foster Wallace

“The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.”
― Voltaire

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”
― Friedrich W. Nietzsche

“When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings

“He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man. He that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him.”
― William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.”
― Richard P. Feynman

“I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn