Michael > Michael's Quotes

“Knowledge, Humboldt believed, had to be shared, exchanged and made available to everybody.”
― Andrea Wulf, The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science

“Und deswegen will Hermann Kesten vor allem das von ihrem Gespräch in Brüssel von ihr wissen: °Wie ist es in Deutschland heute? ...° Aber sie erzählt von einem Deutschland , in dem Kolonialwarenhändler und Feldwebelwitwen Nietsches Philosophie vollstreckten. Einem Deutschland mit unfrohen, rohen Gesängen und drohenden Rundfunkreden, mit der künstlichen Dauer-Ekstase von Aufmärschen, Parteitagen, Heil-Jubeln und Feiern. Einem Deutschland voll berauschter Spießbürger. Berauscht, weil sie es sein sollten - berauscht weil man ihnen Vernunftlosigkeit als Tugend pries, berauscht, weil sie gehorchen und Angst haben durften, und berauscht, weil sie Macht bekommen hatten.”
― Volker Weidermann, Ostende

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

“A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims... but accomplices”
― George Orwell

“Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden & Civil Disobedience

“It's amazing how a little tomorrow can make up for a whole lot of yesterday.”
― John Guare, Landscape of the Body

“In considering the study of physical phenomena, not merely in its bearings on the material wants of life, but in its general influence on the intellectual advancement of mankind, we find its noblest and most important result to be a knowledge of the chain of connection, by which all natural forces are linked together, and made mutually dependent upon each other; and it is the perception of these relations that exalts our views and ennobles our enjoyments.”
― Alexander von Humboldt, COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1

“In a world of diminishing mystery, the unknown persists.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland

“A writer never takes a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing”
― Eugène Ionesco

“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A war doesn't merely kill off a few thousand or a few hundred young men.
It kills off something in people that can never be brought back. And if people go through enough wars, all that's left is the brute,
the creature that we --- you and I and others
like us -- have brought up from the slime",
he paused for a long moment; then he smiled slightly: "The scholar should not be asked to destroy what he has aimed his life to build.”
― John Willams

“You must remember what you are and what you have chosen to become, and the significance of what you are doing. There are wars and defeats and victories of the human race that are not military and that are not recorded in the annals of history. Remember that while you're trying to decide what to do.”
― John Williams, Stoner

“Sometimes, immersed in his books, there would come to him the awareness of all that he did not know, of all that he had not read; and the serenity for which he labored was shattered as he realized the little time he had in life to read so much, to learn what he had to know.”
― John Williams, Stoner

“You must remember what you are and what you have chosen to become, and the significance of what you are doing. There are wars and defeats and victories of the human race that are not military and that are not recorded in the annals of history. Remember that while you're trying to decide what to do.”
― John Willams

“»Stellen wir die Vernunft in den Dienst dessen, wozu sie uns gegeben ist: nämlich in den Dienst der Liebe.«”
― Joseph Roth

“Nature looks more beautiful in the rain”
― Melissa Harrison

“It's got to go bang and it has to be fun, otherwise I won't come!”
― Astrid Lindgren, Karlsson on the Roof

“He had a glimpse at the figure that flitted through the smoking rooms and pages of cheap fiction -a pitiable fellow in his middle age, seeking to renew his youth by taking up with a girl who was much younger ... a fatuous, garishly got up clown at whom the world laughed out of discomfort, pity, and contempt. He looked at this figure as closely as he could; but the longer he looked the less familiar it became. It was not himself that he saw, and he knew suddenly that it was no-one.”
― John Williams

“... a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“In the dark silence, in the void of all sensation, something began to know it. Very dimly at first, from immeasurably far away, but gradually the presence approached. The dimness of that other knowledge grew brighter ...”
― Aldous Huxley, Time Must Have a Stop

“The ladders of life that we scale merrily
Move mysteriously around
So that when you think you're climbing up, man
In fact you're climbing down”
― Nick Cave, And No More Shall We Part Sheet Music

“Ich bin ein zutiefst zufriedener Mensch, und das verdanke ich der Natur”
― Heinz Sielmann

“Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times—although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

“It wasn’t long before Jonathan Gull was off by himself again, far out at sea, hungry, happy, learning.”
― Richard Bach

“When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love ...”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning. That way, their children don’t have to be slaves of praise. They will have a lifelong way to build and repair their own confidence.”
― Carol S. Dweck

“I derive just as much happiness from the process as from the results.”
― Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: How You Can Fulfil Your Potential

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”
― Epicurus

“Gefecht und Schlacht, Tod und Zerstörung, das konnte nicht alles sein. Irgendwo schleiften die zerrissenen Zügel dieses Wagens über die Erde, und so lange mußte man gehen, bis sie über einen hinwegfegten und man versuchen konnte, ein Stück zu ergreifen. Den Sinn mußte man zu finden suchen; nicht das Ganze, die Lösung, das Letzte, aber ein Stückchen Sinn, den Schimmer eines Planes, und dann wollte man in Gottes Namen noch einmal anfangen.”
― Ernst Wiechert, Das einfache Leben

“Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. 'Patriotism' is its cult...Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one's country which is not part of one's love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.”
― Erich Fromm