Hagar > Hagar's Quotes

“Still others reflected on how quickly the food could be snatched from a man's table, or the child from a woman's breast, or the wife from a man's bedcloset, that no strength of grasp could hold these goods in place. And others remarked to themselves how sweet these goods were, in spite of that, and saw that pleasure lost in every moment is pleasure lost forever.”
― Jane Smiley, The Greenlanders

“This is true, at the least, that no veil of beauty hides the evils from our sight.”
― Jane Smiley, The Greenlanders

“Some days they would talk all morning about exactly how warm Heaven might be. It could not be warm enough so that souls went naked, or could it? If souls went naked, then why all the weaving, and if there was no weaving then how did souls occupy themselves?”
― Jane Smiley, The Greenlanders

“My mind is like a room where the door swings free in the breeze, and many visitors come and go and stay and vanish as they will.”
― Jane Smiley, The Greenlanders

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind. Nor hath love's mind of any judgment taste; Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste: And therefore is love said to be a child, Because in choice he is so oft beguil'd.”
― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.”
― William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

“If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.”
― William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

“When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“You speak an infinite deal of nothing.”
― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

“These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume. The sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness
And in the taste confounds the appetite.
Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd!”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“I like this place and could willingly waste my time in it.”
― William Shakespeare

“Dispute not with her: she is lunatic.”
― William Shakespeare, Richard III

“Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“Do not swear by the moon, for she changes constantly. then your love would also change.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“But you are wise,
Or else you love not, for to be wise and love
Exceeds man's might; that dwells with gods above.”
― William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida

“My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr'd; And I myself see not the bottom of it.”
― William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida

“Truth is neither ojectivity nor the balanced view; truth is a selfless subjectivity.”
― Knut Hamsun, Hunger

“I was on the verge of crying with grief at still being alive.”
― Knut Hamsun, Hunger

“The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.”
― Karl Kraus

“A weak man has doubts before a decision; a strong man has them afterwards.”
― Karl Kraus

“A woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful.”
― Karl Kraus

“You don't even live once.”
― Karl Kraus, Half-Truths and One-and-a-Half Truths: Selected Aphorisms

“Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave.”
― Karl Kraus

“A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.”
― Karl Kraus

“There is no more unhappy being under the sun than a fetishist who pines for a boot and has to content himself with an entire woman.”
― Karl Kraus

“Satire that the censor understands is rightly censored.”
― Karl Kraus

“Intercourse with a woman is sometimes a satisfactory substitute for masturbation. But it takes a lot of imagination to make it work.”
― Karl Kraus