Ren > Ren's Quotes

“They belonged to a generation that was yearning, every last one of them, to return home. To be buried under their own vine and fig tree, they liked to say.”
― Velma Pollard, Home Stretch

“She was sharp, and acrid of temperament; and in her speech she was sarcastic at most times, and when angry, incisive and severe. Her words at such times fell like nettles upon those at whom she thrust them.”
― Jean D'Costa, Voices in Exile: Jamaican Texts of the 18th and 19th Centuries

“The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.”
― Oscar Wilde

“For she acted exactly as she pleased, laughed at his strictures against her behaviour, her friends, his lectures on 'respectability'. She was the first woman in his existence who had a life of her own, who did things simply because they pleased her, who argued, who asserted herself. There was only one role he was equipped to play which was to resist, to the bitter end, this encroachment as he saw it on his authority, his manhood. And bitter it became.”
― Olive Senior, Arrival of the Snake-Woman and Other Stories

“But how could he have, when women themselves had suddenly gone insane, were rejecting the direction, the protection, that their menfolk offered them, were recklessly plunging off on their own into unknown and unspeakable depths?”
― Olive Senior, Arrival of the Snake-Woman and Other Stories

“I forced myself to think rationally, something that is conveniently omitted from the upbringing of us women (otherwise my God how we would change the world!)”
― Olive Senior, Arrival of the Snake-Woman and Other Stories

“I do not apologise for baring my soul (though I did not intend to)”
― Olive Senior, Arrival of the Snake-Woman and Other Stories

“She only wished to lean on something more solid than love.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“Elle ne demandait qu'à s'appuyer sur quelque chose plus solide que l'amour.”
― Gustave Flaubert , Madame Bovary

“Love thyself above all, because everything in the world is founded on self-interest.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky , Crime and Punishment

“Yours was only the caprice of an idle and vicious man.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Maintenant je sais que l'homme est capable de grandes actions. Mais s'il n'est pas capable d'un grand sentiment, il ne m'intéresse pas.”
― Albert Camus, La Peste

“Je ne crois pas à l'héroïsme, je sais que c'est facile et j'ai appris que c'était meurtrier. Ce qui m'intéresse, c'est qu'on vive et qu'on meure de ce qu'on aime.”
― Albert Camus

“Écoutant, en effet, les cris d'allégresse qui montaient de la ville, Rieux se souvenait que cette allégresse était toujours menacée. Car il savait ce que cette foule en joie ignorait, et qu'on peut lire dans les livres, que le bacille de la peste ne meurt ni ne disparaît jamais, qu'il peut rester pendant des dizaines d'années endormi dans les meubles et le linge, qu'il attend patiemment dans les chambres, les caves, les malles, les mouchoirs et les paperasses, et que, peut-être, le jour viendrait, où, pour le malheur et l'enseignement des hommes, la peste réveillerait ses rats et les enverrait mourir dans une cité heureuse.”
― Camus

“Non, mon père, dit-il. Je me fais une autre idée de l'amour. Et je refuserai jusqu'à la mort d'aimer cette création où des enfants sont torturés.”
― Albert Camus

“Le chrétien saurait s'abandonner à la volonté divine, même incompréhensible: on ne pouvait dire, cela je comprend, mais ceci est inacceptable.”
― Albert Camus, La Peste