Damion > Damion's Quotes

“Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead

“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“I utter what you would not dare think.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy

“You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.”
― H. L. Mencken

“Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.”
― H.L. Mencken, Prejudices: Second series

“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“I have always looked upon decay as being just as wonderful and rich an expression of life as growth.”
― Henry Miller

“You can lose your way groping among the shadows of the past.”
― Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Journey to the End of the Night

“There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.”
― Aldous Huxley

“We are all geniuses up to the age of ten.”
― Aldous Huxley

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

“Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead.”
― Aldous Huxley, Do what you will: Twelve essays

“This is very important -- to take leisure time. Pace is the essence. Without stopping entirely and doing nothing at all for great periods, you're gonna lose everything...just to do nothing at all, very, very important. And how many people do this in modern society? Very few. That's why they're all totally mad, frustrated, angry and hateful.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Every man with a little leisure and enough money for railway tickets, every man, indeed, who knows how to read, has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.”
― Aldous Huxley, Jesting Pilate

“The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. "Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does." They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

“Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.”
― William S. Burroughs, The Job: Interviews with William S. Burroughs

“In the U.S. you have to be a deviant or die of boredom.”
― William Burroughs

“as soon as you know you are in prison, you have a possibility to escape.”
― William S. Burroughs, My Education: A Book of Dreams

“The next time you try to seduce anyone, don't do it with talk, with words. Women know more about words than men ever will. And they know how little they can ever possibly mean.”
― William Faulkner

“stay with the beer.

beer is continuous blood.

a continuous lover.”
― Charles Bukowski, Love Is a Dog from Hell

“There's a sorrow and pain in everyone's life, but every now and then there's a ray of light that melts the loneliness in your heart and brings comfort like hot soup and a soft bed.”
― Hubert Selby Jr., Requiem for a Dream

“The voice so filled with nostalgia that you could almost see the memories floating through the blue smoke, memories not only of music and joy and youth, but perhaps, of dreams. They listened to the music, each hearing it in his own way, feeling relaxed and a part of the music, a part of each other, and almost a part of the world. ”
― Hubert Selby Jr., Requiem for a Dream

“We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.”
― Somerset Maugham

“It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale: Or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard

“Unfortunately sometimes one can't do what one thinks is right without making someone else unhappy.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“I drink to make other people more interesting.”
― Hemingway, Ernest