Nick > Nick's Quotes

“I am not laughing, Dorian; at least I am not laughing at you. But you should not say the greatest romance of your life. You should say the first romance of your life. You will always be loved, and you will always be in love with love. A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do. That is the one use of the idle classes of a country. Don't be afraid. There are exquisite things in store for you. This is merely the beginning. ”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“To define is to limit.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“To be popular one must be a mediocrity.”
― Oscar Wilde

“But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“When love beckons to you follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And when he speaks to you believe in him, Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden. For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth......

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure, Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor, Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears. Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.

Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love. And think not you can direct the course of love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course. Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself."

But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully.”
― Kahlil Gibran, Le Prophète

“Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable?”
― John Green, An Abundance of Katherines

“They love their hair because they're not smart enough to love something more interesting.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“They'll either want to kill you, kiss you, or be you.”
― Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay

“Oh Jake," Brett said, "We could have had such a damned good time together."
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly, pressing Brett against me.
Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“Youth is above all a collection of possibilities.”
― Albert Camus

“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”
― Albert Camus

“Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.”
― Albert Camus

“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”
― Albert Camus

“But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.”
― Albert Camus

“Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Actually, years mean nothing. It's what's inside them.”
― Simon Van Booy, Love Begins in Winter: Five Stories

“The present grows within the boundaries of the past.”
― Simon Van Booy, Love Begins in Winter: Five Stories

“Well, father, in the shipwreck of life, for life is an eternal shipwreck of our hopes, I cast into the sea my useless encumbrance, that is all, and I remain with my own will, disposed to live perfectly alone, and, consequently, perfectly free. (Eugenie to her father)”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

“I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?”
― Voltaire, Candide, or, Optimism

“I read only to please myself, and enjoy only what suits my taste.”
― Voltaire, Candide and Other Tales

“Everybody has a ‘gripping stranger’ in their lives, Andy, a stranger who unwittingly possesses a bizarre hold over you. Maybe it’s the kid in cut-offs who mows your lawn or the woman wearing White Shoulders who stamps your book at the library—a stranger who, if you were to come home and find a message from them on your answering machine saying ‘Drop everything. I love you. Come away with me now to Florida,’ you’d follow them.”
― Douglas Coupland, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture

“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn't love as much in eighty years as I could in a day.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn.”
― Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights