David > David's Quotes

“Balance every thought with its opposition. Because the marriage of them is the destruction of illusion.”
― Aleister Crowley

“I've often thought that there isn't any "I" at all; that we are simply the means of expression of something else; that when we think we are ourselves, we are simply the victims of a delusion.”
― Aleister Crowley, Diary of a Drug Fiend

“There ain't no clean way to make a hundred million bucks.... Somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the ground cut out from under them... Decent people lost their jobs.... Big money is big power and big power gets used wrong. It's the system.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“To see and feel one's beloved naked for the first time is one of life's pure, irreducible epiphanies. If there is a true religion in the universe, it must include that truth of contact or be forever hollow. To make love to the one true person who deserves that love is one of the few absolute rewards of being a human being, balancing all of the pain, loss, awkwardness, loneliness, idiocy, compromise, and clumsiness that go with the human condition. To make love to the right person makes up for a lot of mistakes.”
― Dan Simmons, The Rise of Endymion

“No one really starts anything new, Mrs. Nemur. Everyone builds on other men's failures. There is nothing really original in science. What each man contributes to the sum of knowledge is what counts.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“There was a sad fellow over on a bar stool talking to the bartender, who was polishing a glass and listening with that plastic smile people wear when they are trying not to scream.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“Man has always been a venal animal. The growth of populations, the huge costs of war, the incessant pressure of confiscatory taxation – all these things make him more and more venal. The average man is tired and scared, and a tired, scared man can’t afford ideals. He has to buy food for his family. In our time we have seen a shocking decline in both public and private morals. You can’t expect quality from people whose lives are a subjection to a lack of quality. You can’t have quality with mass production. You don’t want it because it lasts too long. So you substitute styling, which is a commercial swindle intended to produce artificial obsolescence. Mass production couldn’t sell its goods next year unless it made what is sold this year look unfashionable a year from now. We have the whitest kitchens and the most shining bathrooms in the world. But in the lovely white kitchen the average [person] can’t produce a meal fit to eat, and the lovely shining bathroom is mostly a receptacle for deodorants, laxatives, sleeping pills, and the products of that confidence racket called the cosmetic industry. We make the finest packages in the world, Mr Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“He was a guy who talked with commas, like a heavy novel. Over the phone anyway.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“There is, after all, no pleasure like that given by a woman who really wants to see you.”
― Anthony Powell, The Acceptance World

“Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven't committed.”
― Anthony Powell

“Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad.”
― Aldous Huxley

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
― Marcel Proust

“Everything great in the world is done by neurotics; they alone founded our religions and created our masterpieces.”
― Marcel Proust

“90% of everything is crap.”
― Theodore Sturgeon

“Jesus said, "If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty.”
― Gospel of Thomas

“Brains are survival engines, not truth detectors.”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight

“Every concert pianist knows that the surest way to ruin a performance is to be aware of what the fingers are doing. Every dancer and acrobat knows enough to let the mind go, let the body run itself. Every driver of a manual vehicle arrives at destinations with no recollection of the stops and turns and roads traveled in getting there. You are all sleepwalkers, whether climbing creative peaks or slogging through some mundane routine for the thousandth time. You are all sleepwalkers.”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight