Ashley Hawkins > Ashley's Quotes

“Here at last
We shall be free;
the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.”
― John Milton

“A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part

“Waste not a day in vain digression;
with resolute, courageous trust
seek every possible impression
and make it firmly your posession
you'll then work on because you must.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Man should not be in the service of society, society should be in the service of man. When man is in the service of society, you have a monster state, and that's what is threatening the world at this minute. ...Certainly Star Wars has a valid mythological perspective. It shows the state as a machine and asks, "Is the machine going to crush humanity or serve humanity?" Humanity comes not from the machine but from the heart. What I see in Star Wars is the same problem that Faust gives us: Mephistopheles, the machine man, can provide us with all the means, and is thus likely to determine the aims of life as well. But of course the characteristic of Faust, which makes him eligible to be saved, is that he seeks aims that are not those of the machine. Now, when Luke Skywalker unmasks his father, he is taking off the machine role that the father has played. The father was the uniform. That is power, the state role.”
― Joseph Campbell

“Who are you then?"
"I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part

“You are aware of only one unrest;
Oh, never learn to know the other!
Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast,
And one is striving to forsake its brother.
Unto the world in grossly loving zest,
With clinging tendrils, one adheres;
The other rises forcibly in quest
Of rarefied ancestral spheres.
If there be spirits in the air
That hold their sway between the earth and sky,
Descend out of the golden vapors there
And sweep me into iridescent life.
Oh, came a magic cloak into my hands
To carry me to distant lands,
I should not trade it for the choicest gown,
Nor for the cloak and garments of the crown.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part

“Whatever is the lot of humankind
I want to taste within my deepest self.
I want to seize the highest and the lowest,
to load its woe and bliss upon my breast,
and thus expand my single self titanically
and in the end go down with all the rest.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part

“God help us -- for art is long, and life so short.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part

“If I do not write to empty my mind, I go mad.”
― George Gordon Byron

“But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling, like dew, upon a thought produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions think.”
― Lord George Gordon Byron

“Tis strange,-but true; for truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction: if it could be told,
How much would novels gain by the exchange!
How differently the world would men behold!”
― George Gordon Byron, Don Juan

“Sorrow is knowledge, those that know the most must mourn the deepest, the tree of knowledge is not the tree of life. ”
― Lord George Gordon Byron

“Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is passed in sleep.”
― Lord George Gordon Byron

“Are not the mountains, waves, and skies as much a part of me, as I of them?”
― George Gordon Byron