Michael Finocchiaro > Michael's Quotes

“I believe that words uttered in passion contain a greater living truth than do those words which express thoughts rationally conceived. It is blood that moves the body. Words are not meant to stir the air only: they are capable of moving greater things.”
― Natsume Soseki, Kokoro

“You seem to be under the impression that there is a special breed of bad humans. There is no such thing as a stereotype bad man in this world. Under normal conditions, everybody is more or less good, or, at least, ordinary. But tempt them, and they may suddenly change. That is what is so frightening about men.”
― Natsume Soseki, Kokoro

“I do not want your admiration now, because I do not want your insults in the future. I bear with my loneliness now, in order to avoid greater loneliness in the years ahead. You see, loneliness is the price we have to pay for being born in this modern age, so full of freedom, independence, and our own egotistical selves.”
― Natsume Sōseki, Kokoro

“It is painfully easy to define human beings. They are beings who, for no good reason at all, create their own unnecessary suffering.”
― Natsume Sōseki, I am a Cat III

“Living as I do with human beings, the more that I observe them, the more I am forced to conclude that they are selfish.”
― Natsume Sōseki, I Am a Cat

“Now that I thought about it, though, I realized that most people actually encourage you to turn bad. They seem to think that if you don't, you'll never get anywhere in the world. And then on those rare occasions when they encounter somebody who's honest and pure-hearted, they look down on him and say he's nothing but a kid, a Botchan. If that's the way it is, it would be better if they didn't have those ethics classes in elementary school and middle school where the teacher is always telling you to be honest and not lie. The schools might as well just go ahead and teach you how to tell lies, how to mistrust everybody, and how to take advantage of people. Wouldn't their students, and the world at large, be better off that way? Redshirt had laughed at me for being simpleminded. If people are going to get laughed at for being simpleminded and sincere, there's no hope. Kiyo never laughed at me for saying anything like what I said to Redshirt. She would have been deeply impressed by it. Compared to Redshirt, she's far and away the superior person.”
― Natsume Soseki, Botchan

“He is totally abandoned in the way he buys book after book, never to read a single one. I wouldn't mind if he used his head and bought in moderation, but no. Whenever the mood takes him, he ambles off to the biggest bookshop in the city and brings back home as many books as chance to catch his fancy. Then, at the end of the month, he adopts an attitude of complete detachment.”
― Natsume Sōseki, I Am a Cat

“I am an inconsistent creature. Perhaps it is the pressure of my past, and not my own perverse mind, that has made me into this contradictory being. I am all too well aware of this fault in myself. You must forgive me.”
― Sōseki Natsume, Kokoro

“It is not you in particular that I distrust, but the whole of humanity.”
― Natsume Sōseki, Kokoro

“On the whole, all people are good, or at least they're normal. The frightening thing is that they can suddenly turn bad when it comes to the crunch.”
― Natsume Sōseki, Kokoro

“Desire is a frightening thing.”
― Natsume Sōseki, Sanshirō

“You'd better watch out—life can be dangerous.”
― Natsume Sōseki, Sanshirō

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

“Tonight I can write the saddest lines
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.”
― Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

“Then love knew it was called love.
And when I lifted my eyes to your name,
suddenly your heart showed me my way”
― Pablo Neruda, Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada. Cien sonetos de amor

“I am no longer in love with her, that's certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”
― Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

“It was at that age
that poetry came in search of me.”
― Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

“Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.”
― Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

“And I watch my words from a long way off.
They are more yours than mine.
They climb on my old suffering like ivy.”
― Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

“The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

“You won't know the meaning of success without knowing how it feels to fail.”
― Kazu Kibuishi, The Last Council

“I have been around for so long, and I've seen so many things. When you live as long as I do, you begin to see patterns in life. When I look into the future, I am looking into these patterns. You creatures are not as complex as you make yourselves out to be.”
― Kazu Kibuishi, The Stonekeeper's Curse

“Remember that it's easier to see where light is coming from in the dark. This is important to remember, for when all the lights go out.”
― Kazu Kibuishi, Firelight

“Someone who had authority, or should have had authority and did not exercise authority. I do not know. But someone sometime let you forget how to choose, and what. Someone let your peoples forget it was the only thing of importance, choosing. So completely forgetting that when I say choose to you you make expressions with your face such as “Herrrrrre we are going.” Someone taught that temples are for fanatics only and took away the temples and promised there was no need for temples. And now there is no shelter. And no map for finding the shelter of a temple. And you all stumble about in the dark, this confusion of permissions.”
― David Foster Wallace.

“Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“You'll stay with me?'
Until the very end,' said James.”
― J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

“What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“tropped head”
― John "Book of the Dark" Bishop, Joyce's Book of the Dark: Finnegans Wake