Jamie > Jamie's Quotes

“There were things I wanted to tell him. But I knew they would hurt him. So I buried them, and let them hurt me.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“To know ten thousand things, know one well”
― Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy

“Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.”
― Erich Fromm

“Do nothing that is of no use”
― Musashi Miyamoto, Book of Five Rings

“Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world”
― Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings: The Classic Guide to Strategy

“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”
― Plato

“Your talk," I said, "is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand.”
― Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

“What you think is the point is not the point at all but only the beginning of the sharpness.”
― Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

“...it is a great thing to do what is necessary before it becomes essential and unavoidable.”
― Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

“What makes Iago evil? Some people ask. I never ask.”
― Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays

“There was silence. Something real was happening: this was, as it were, her life. If she could keep that in mind she would be able to play it through, do the right thing, whatever that meant.”
― Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays

“I know what "nothing" means, and keep on playing.”
― Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays

“It's funny about love', Sophia said. 'The more you love someone, the less he likes you back.'
'That's very true,' Grandmother observed. 'And so what do you do?'
'You go on loving,' said Sophia threateningly. 'You love harder and harder.”
― Tove Jansson, The Summer Book

“The thing about God, she thought, is that He usually does help, but not until you've made an effort on your own.”
― Tove Jansson, The Summer Book

“Technology is the knack of arranging the world in such a way that you don't have to experience it.”
― Max Frisch, Homo Faber

“Time has its revenges, but revenge seems so often sour. Wouldn’t we all do better not trying to understand, accepting the fact that no human being will ever understand another, not a wife with a husband, nor a parent a child? Perhaps that’s why men have invented God – a being capable of understanding. ”
― Graham Greene, The Quiet American

“Sooner or later...one has to take sides. If one is to remain human.”
― Graham Greene, The Quiet American

“So it always is: when you escape to a desert the silence shouts in your ear.”
― Graham Greene, The Quiet American

“That was my first instinct -- to protect him. It never occurred to me that there was a greater need to protect myself. Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.”
― Graham Greene, The Quiet American

“From childhood I had never believed in permanence, and yet I had longed for it. Always I was afraid of losing happiness. This month, next year...death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again forever.”
― Graham Greene, The Quiet American

“Innocence is a kind of insanity”
― Graham Greene, The Quiet American

“A pretty sight, a lady with a book.”
― Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

“When people say that nothing happens in their lives I believe them. But you must understand that everything happens to an artist; time is always redeemed, nothing is lost and wonders never cease.”
― Muriel Spark, Loitering with Intent

“Men who start by burning books end by burning other men,”
― Yōko Ogawa, The Memory Police

“As I grow older, much older, I will experience many things, and I will hit rock bottom again and again. Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated. I won't let my spirit be destroyed.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen

“People aren't overcome by situations or outside forces. Defeat comes from within.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen