Melissa > Melissa's Quotes

“The unexpected has happened so continually in my life that it has ceased to deserve the name.”
― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Stark Munro Letters

“Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”
― Shel Silverstein

“My mind," he said, "rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four

“There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.”
― Oscar Levant

“He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."

[On British Labour politician Stafford Cripps.]”
― Winston S. Churchill, Wealth, War and Wisdom

“No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.”
― Aristotle

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
― C.G. Jung

“Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”
― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes

“Crime is common. Logic is rare. Therefore it is upon the logic rather than upon the crime that you should dwell.”
― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Copper Beeches - a Sherlock Holmes Short Story

“No: I am not tired. I have a curious constitution. I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely." ~ Sherlock Holmes”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four

“I'm afraid that sometimes you'll play lonely games too. Games you can't win 'cause you'll play against you.”
― Dr. Seuss

“If things start happening, don't worry, don't stew, just go right along and you'll start happening too.”
― Dr. Seuss

“All the things you can talk about in anyone's work are the things that are least important.... You can describe all the externals of a performance - everything, in fact, but what really constitutes its core. Explaining something makes it go away, so to speak; what's important is what's left over after you've explained everything else.”
― Edward Gorey

“This is the theory… that anything that is art… is presumably about some certain thing, but is really always about something else, and it’s no good having one without the other, because if you just have the something it is boring and if you just have the something else it’s irritating.”
― Edward Gorey

“There are always some lunatics about. It would be a dull world without them.”
― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Red-Headed League

“I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone

“My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Red-Headed League

“Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence– whether much that is glorious– whether all that is profound– does not spring from disease of thought– from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

“He awoke, opened his eye. The room meant very little to him; he was too deeply immersed in the non-being from which he had just come. If he had not the energy to ascertain his position in time and space, he also lacked the desire. ... In utter comfort, utter relaxation he lay absolutely still for a while, and then sank back into on the the light momentary sleeps that occur after a long, profound one.”
― Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky

“I've seen my own death in dreams like this and it's helped me appreciate life more. I've also seen my own life in dreams and it's helped me appreciate death more.”
― Marilyn Manson, The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

“Sometimes you dream strange dreams, impossible and unnatural; you wake up and remember them clearly, and are surprised at a strange fact: you remember first of all that reason did not abandon you during the whole course of your dream; you even remember that you acted extremely cleverly and logically for that whole long, long time when you were surrounded by murderers, when they were being clever with you, concealed their intentions, treated you in a friendly way, though they already had their weapons ready and were only waiting for some sort of sign; you remember how cleverly you finally deceived them, hid from them; then you realize that they know your whole deception by heart and merely do not show you that they know where you are hiding; but you are clever and deceive them again—all that you remember clearly. But why at the same time could your reason be reconciled with such obvious absurdities and impossibilities, with which, among other things, your dream was filled? Before your eyes, one of your murderers turned into a woman, and from a woman into a clever, nasty little dwarf—and all that you allowed at once, as an accomplished fact, almost without the least perplexity, and precisely at the moment when, on the other hand, your reason was strained to the utmost, displaying extraordinary force, cleverness, keenness, logic? Why, also, on awakening from your dream and entering fully into reality, do you feel almost every time, and occasionally with an extraordinary force of impressions, that along with the dream you are leaving behind something you have failed to fathom? You smile at the absurdity of your dream and feel at the same time that the tissue of those absurdities contains some thought, but a thought that is real, something that belongs to your true life, something that exists and has always existed in your heart; it is as if your dream has told you something new, prophetic, awaited; your impression is strong, it is joyful or tormenting, but what it is and what has been told you—all that you can neither comprehend nor recall.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“Occasionally I was so much better that I could go out; but the streets used to put me in such a rage that I would lock myself up for days rather than go out, even if I were well enough to do so! I could not bear to see all those preoccupied, anxious-looking creatures continuously surging along the streets past me! Why are they always anxious? What is the meaning of their eternal care and worry? It is their wickedness, their perpetual detestable malice—that's what it is—they are all full of malice, malice!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“In these moments of tête-à-tête with the infinite, how different life looks! How all that usually occupies and excites us becomes suddenly puerile, frivolous, and vain. We seem to ourselves mere puppets, marionettes, strutting seriously through a fantastic show, and mistaking gewgaws for things of great price.”
― Henri-Frédéric Amiel, Amiel's Journal

“The man who has no inner life is the slave of his surroundings.”
― Henri Frédéric Amiel, Amiel's Journal

“When I am with you, we stay up all night.
When you're not here, I can't go to sleep.
Praise God for those two insomnias!
And the difference between them.”
― Rumi

“The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend”
― Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

“Listen, real poetry doesn't say anything; it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through anyone that suits you.”
― Jim Morrison

“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first.”
― Jim MORRISON