An > An's Quotes

“Op het erf van de boerderij zag je soms de meest onwaarschijnlijke vormen van verbondenheid - de gans verliefd op de ezel, het katje veilig spelend tussen de poten van de vervaarlijke kettinghond. En op het erf van de mensheid bestonden vormen van verbondenheid die al even onwaarschijnlijk, en toch, voor de betrokkenen, nooit absurd waren.”
― Julian Barnes, The Only Story

“Als jij bij me bent, houd je me misschien vast in deze wereld.'
'Ik ben een uitstekende vasthouder.'
'Beloof je dat?'
Ik knikte.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, Creatures of a Day: And Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know. Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.”
― Carl Jung

“Whenever you think or you believe or you know, you're a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself.”
― e.e. cummings

“Unbeing dead isn't being alive.”
― E. E. Cummings

“To be nobody but
yourself in a world
which is doing its best day and night to make you like
everybody else means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.”
― E.E. Cummings

“I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“I was pulled this way and that for longer than I can remember. And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own. I have also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself. So after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
― E.E. Cummings

“When you remember me, it means you have carried something of who I am with you, that I have left some mark of who I am on who you are. It means that you can summon me back to your mind even though countless years and miles may stand between us. It means that if we meet again, you will know me. It means that even after I die, you can still see my face and hear my voice and speak to me in your heart.”
― Frederick Buechner

“What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.”
― Pablo Neruda

“Who are you talking to?”

“Myself.”

“You do that a lot.”

“I know. I’m the only one who understands me.”
― Kasie West, P.S. I Like You

“When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”
― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

“I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart)I am never without it (anywhere
I go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling)
I fear no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet)I want no world (for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)”
― E.E. Cummings

“Everything has been figured out, except how to live.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Laughter is the language of the soul.”
― Pablo Neruda

“Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“I want
To do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.”
― Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

“You are willing to die, you coward, but not to live.”
― Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“It is not for me to judge another man's life. I must judge, I must choose, I must spurn, purely for myself. For myself, alone.”
― Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
― Bernard M. Baruch

“The answer to injustice is not to silence the critic, but to end the injustice.”
― Paul Robeson

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“what is stronger than the human heart which shatters over and over and still lives”
― Rupi Kaur

“You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”
― Dr. Seuss

“i do not want to have you
to fill the empty parts of me
i want to be full on my own

i want to feel so complete
i could light a whole city
and then
i want to have you
cause the two of
us combined
could set
it on fire”
― Rupi Kaur