Constantine Papakonstantinou > Constantine's Quotes

“In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.”
― Baruch de Spinoza, Spinoza in der europäischen Geistesgeschichte

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
― Aldous Huxley, Music at Night and Other Essays

“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“It isn't a matter of forgetting. What one has to learn is how to remember and yet be free of the past.”
― Aldous Huxley, Island

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

“All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“This is a brief life, but in its brevity it offers us some splendid moments, some meaningful adventures.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Kim

“He wrapped himself in quotations - as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Many Inventions

“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”
― Rudyard Kipling

“The air was full of all the night noises that, taken together, make one big silence...”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

“If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."

[Cosmos, Part 11: The Persistence of Memory (1980)]”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors. The library connects us with the insight and knowledge, painfully extracted from Nature, of the greatest minds that ever were, with the best teachers, drawn from the entire planet and from all our history, to instruct us without tiring, and to inspire us to make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“More recently, books, especially paperbacks, have been printed in massive and inexpensive editions. For the price of a modest meal you can ponder the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, the origin of species, the interpretation of dreams, the nature of things. Books are like seeds. They can lie dormant for centuries and then flower in the most unpromising soil.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“I have my own matches and sulphur, and I'll make my own hell.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Light That Failed

“The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.”
― Rudyard Kipling

“We had a kettle; we let it leak:
Our not repairing made it worse.
We haven't had any tea for a week...
The bottom is out of the Universe.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Collected Poems of Rudyard Kipling

“Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie.”
― Rudyard Kipling

“Gardens are not made by singing 'Oh, how beautiful!' and sitting in the shade.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Complete Verse

“No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
― Rudyard Kipling

“The Power of the Dog
by Rudyard Kipling


There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie--
Perfect passion and worship fed
By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.
Nevertheless it is hardly fair
To risk your heart for a dog to tear.

When the fourteen years which Nature permits
Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits,
And the vet's unspoken prescription runs
To lethal chambers or loaded guns,
Then you will find--it's your own affair--
But ... you've given your heart to a dog to tear.

When the body that lived at your single will,
With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!).
When the spirit that answered your every mood
Is gone--wherever it goes--for good,
You will discover how much you care,
And will give your heart to a dog to tear.

We've sorrow enough in the natural way,
When it comes to burying Christian clay.
Our loves are not given, but only lent,
At compound interest of cent per cent.
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we've kept 'em, the more do we grieve:
For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short-time loan is as bad as a long--
So why in--Heaven (before we are there)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?”
― Rudyard Kipling, Collected Dog Stories