Naoise > Naoise's Quotes

“Adversity is like a strong wind. I don't mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom...You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough.”
― William Blake, Proverbs of Hell

“Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul that experiences it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses.”
― Aldous Huxley

“[El placer de comer] es un placer que hay que descubrir a los treinta años. Es la edad en que el ser humano deja de ser un imbécil y a cambio paga el precio de empezar a envejecer.”
― Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Los Mares Del Sur

“People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite... Man's goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished.”
― Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

“All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.”
― Susan Sontag

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

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
― Mae West

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“Reflexiona en lo que significa la muerte. Es una pérdida, trágica por irreversible. ¿A quién pierde el que muere? ¿A sí mismo? No, porque el muerto ha dejado de existir y quien no existe no puede perder nada. La muerte es asunto de los vivos: es la pérdida de un ser querido.”
― Stanisław Lem, The Star Diaries

“La naturaleza se preocupa únicamente por el puñado de células reproductoras de cada individuo, y manda el resto al cuerno.”
― Stanisław Lem, The Star Diaries

“Son dignos de compasión esos genios abortados, titanes de espíritu enano, mutilados desde el nacimiento por la naturaleza, que, en una de sus bromas siniestras, les impuso a la vez la falta de talento y el empeño de crear digno de un Leonardo; lo que la vida les trae es la indiferencia o la burla, y lo único que se puede hacer por ellos es escucharles con paciencia y fingir que su monomanía nos interesa.”
― Stanisław Lem, The Star Diaries

“Los seres humanos no desean la inmortalidad. Lo que quieren es, sencillamente, no morir. Quieren vivir (…) Quieren sentir la tierra bajo sus pies y ver las nubes por encima de su cabeza, amar a otras personas, estar con ellas y pensar en ellas.”
― Stanisław Lem, The Star Diaries

“Te adoro porque me volviste puta.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

“Él era consciente de que no la amaba. Se había casado porque le gustaba su altivez, su seriedad, su fuerza, y también por una pizca de vanidad suya, pero mientras ella lo besaba por primera vez, estaba seguro que no habría ningún obstáculo para inventar un buen amor.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

“Se dejó llevar por la convicción de que los seres humanos no nacen para siempre el día en que sus madres los alumbran, sino que la vida los obliga otra vez y muchas veces a parirse a sí mismos.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

“[Dean] “My dear fellow, who will let you?”

[Roark] “That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“If you want to find out what a man is to the bottom, give him power. Any man can stand adversity — only a great man can stand prosperity. It is the glory of Abraham Lincoln that he never abused power only on the side of mercy”
― Robert Ingersoll

“(…) we were being trained to be heroes the way they train circus horses, and we quickly got used to it.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“It's funny how much of the miseries of this world are caused by short people –they are so much more quick-tempered and difficult to get on than the tall ones.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“Me preguntó si me había llevado ya a la cama a la traductora (no sabía nada concreto sobre Julia, solamente que había alguien, una mujer, conmigo; pero creía que se trataba del deber obvio de cualquier buen italiano en viaje de trabajo)…”
― Claudio Giunta, Mar Bianco

“The hand’s dexterity is the physical manifestation of the mind’s ingenuity,”
― Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others

“Adding manpower to a late software project, makes it later.”
― Frederick P. Brooks Jr., The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering

“The only way to escape the corruptible effect of praise is to go on working.”
― Albert Einstein

“Ask yourself, if all men must grub in the dirt for food, how shall any man lift his eyes to contemplate the stars? If each of us must break his back to build a hovel, who shall raise the temples to glorify the gods? For some men to be great, others must be enslaved.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“Four things do not come back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity,”
― Ted Chiang, The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate

“Give as few orders as possible," his father had told him once long ago. "Once you've given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“A leader, you see, is one of the things that distinguishes a mob from a people. He maintains the level of individuals. Too few individuals, and a people revert to a mob.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“when you think of the company as a product, you ask different questions: Do people who work here know how to use the company? Is it simple? Complex? Is it obvious how it works? What’s fast about it? What’s slow about it? Are there bugs? What’s broken that we can fix quickly and what’s going to take a long time?”
― Jason Fried, It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work