Prisca > Prisca's Quotes

“Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly.”
― Langston Hughes

“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”
― Confucious

“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”
― Cesar A. Cruz

“Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.”
― Langston Hughes

“For a lack of attention a thousand forms of loveliness elude us everyday”
― Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness

“Isn't it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive--it's such an interesting world. It wouldn't be half so interesting if we know all about everything, would it? There'd be no scope for imagination then, would there?But am I talking too much? People are always telling me I do. Would you rather I didn't talk? If you say so I'll stop. I can STOP when I make up my mind to it, although it's difficult.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
― Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho

“My mistakes are my life.”
― Samuel Beckett

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
― Anais Nin

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”
― Franz Kafka

“Always be a poet, even in prose.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
― Gospel of Thomas

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
― Cicero

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“I have drunken deep of joy,
And I will taste no other wine tonight.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.”
― Rumi

“Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.”
― Bertrand Russell

“Jessica has a forehead scar from the deep end of a pool. I ask Jessica what drowning feels like and she says not everything feels like something else.”
― Angie Sijun Lou

“Pregressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensity social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation”
― Angela Davis

“It is in collectivities that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism.”
― Angela Y. Davis, Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine and the Foundations of a Movement

“You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.”
― Angela Davis

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
― Rumi

“I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.”
― Georgia O'Keefe

“You will never be able to experience everything. So, please, do poetical justice to your soul and simply experience yourself.”
― Albert Camus, Notebooks, 1935-1951

“All of that art-for-art’s-sake stuff is BS,” she declares. “What are these people talking about? Are you really telling me that Shakespeare and Aeschylus weren’t writing about kings? All good art is political! There is none that isn’t. And the ones that try hard not to be political are political by saying, ‘We love the status quo.’ We’ve just dirtied the word ‘politics,’ made it sound like it’s unpatriotic or something.” Morrison laughs derisively. “That all started in the period of state art, when you had the communists and fascists running around doing this poster stuff, and the reaction was ‘No, no, no; there’s only aesthetics.’ My point is that is has to be both: beautiful and political at the same time. I’m not interested in art that is not in the world. And it’s not just the narrative, it’s not just the story; it’s the language and the structure and what’s going on behind it. Anybody can make up a story.”
― Toni Morrison

“If a white man wants to lynch me, that's his problem. If he's got the power to lynch me, that's my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; it's a question of power. Racism gets its power from capitalism. Thus, if you're anti-racist, whether you know it or not, you must be anti-capitalist. The power for racism, the power for sexism, comes from capitalism, not an attitude.”
― Stokely Carmichael