Michael Simsa > Michael's Quotes

“From time immemorial, men have had ideas about a Supreme Being (one or several) and about the Land of the Hereafter. Only modern man thinks he can do without them.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“The individual who is not anchored in God can offer no resistance on his own resources to the physical and moral blandishments of the world.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“It is, unfortunately, only too clear that if the individual is not truly regenerated in spirit, society cannot be either, for society is the sum total of the individuals in need of redemption.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“Here each of us must ask: Have I any religious experience and immediate relation to God, and hence that certainty which will keep me, as an individual, from dissolving int he crowd?”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“Even if, juristically speaking, we are not accessories to the crime, we are always, thanks to our human nature, potential criminals. In reality we merely lacked a suitable opportunity to be drawn into the infernal melee.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“A symbol does not disguise, it reveals in time.”
― C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self/Symbols and the Interpretation of Dreams

“Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.”
― Alan Watts

“Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

“[...]the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“The strength of a person's spirit would then be measured by how much 'truth' he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.”
― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

“I'm not saying I'm gonna change the world, but I guarantee that I will spark the brain that will change the world.”
― Tupac Shakur

“The tongue may hide the truth but the eyes—never!”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“There is, if you don't mind my saying so, something sinister about men who avoid wine, games, the company of charming women, and good dinner-table conversation. People like that are either seriously ill or they secretly disdain their fellow men.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“Reading the very best writers—let us say Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy—is not going to make us better citizens. Art is perfectly useless, according to the sublime Oscar Wilde, who was right about everything. He also told us that all bad poetry is sincere. Had I the power to do so, I would command that these words be engraved above every gate at every university, so that each student might ponder the splendor of the insight.”
― Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages

“It appears that the prostitute, not the salesman, best exemplifies the qualities indispensable to success in American society.”
― Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations

“because wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Dating for me in my twenties was like this musical-chairs thing. Everybody was running around and having fun. Then I hit thirty and it was like the music stopped and everybody started sitting down. I didn’t want to be the only one left without a chair. Sometimes I think I married my husband just because he was the closest chair to me at thirty. Sometimes I think I should have just waited for someone who might be a better partner, and maybe I should have, but that seemed risky. What I really wish I’d done is thought more about marriage sooner. Like when I was in my twenties.”
― Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now

“I've waited a long time to show these flowers how pretty you are.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear