lilly amber > lilly's Quotes

“There is another world, and it is in this one.”
― Paul Éluard

“I cannot be known
Better than you know me

Your eyes in which we sleep
We together
Have made for my man’s gleam
A better fate than for the common nights

Your eyes in which I travel
Have given to signs along the roads
A meaning alien to the earth

In your eyes who reveal to us
Our endless solitude

Are no longer what they thought themselves to be

You cannot be known
Better than I know you.”
― Paul Eluard

“Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.”
― David Hume, Of the Standard of Taste and Other Essays

“You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.”
― Rene Daumal

“This place has only three exits, sir: Madness, and Death.”
― Rene Daumal, A Night of Serious Drinking

“A knife is neither true nor false, but anyone impaled on its blade is in error.”
― Rene Daumal, Mount Analogue

“As beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table.”
― Lautreamont

“Farewell until eternity, where you and I shall not find ourselves together.”
― Comte de Lautréamont, Les Chants de Maldoror

“I sought a soul that might resemble mine, and I could not find it. I scanned all the crannies of the earth: my perseverance was useless. Yet I could not remain alone. There had to be someone who would approve of my character; there had to be someone with the same ideas as myself. It was morning. The sun in all his magnificence rose on the horizon, and behold, there also appeared before my eyes a young man whose presence made flowers grow as he passed. He approached me and held out his hand: “I have come to you, you who seek me. Let us give thanks for this happy day.” But I replied: “Go! I did not summon you. I do not need your friendship… .” It was evening. Night was beginning to spread the blackness of her veil over nature. A beautiful woman whom I could scarcely discern also exerted her bewitching sway upon me and looked at me with compassion. She did not, however, dare speak to me. I said: “Come closer that I may discern your features clearly, for at this distance the starlight is not strong enough to illumine them.” Then, with modest demeanour, eyes lowered, she crossed the greensward and reached my side. I said as soon as I saw her: “I perceive that goodness and justice have dwelt in your heart: we could not live together. Now you are admiring my good looks which have bowled over more than one woman. But sooner or later you would regret having consecrated your love to me, for you do not know my soul. Not that I shall be unfaithful to you: she who devotes herself to me with so much abandon and trust — with the same trust and abandon do I devote myself to her. But get this into your head and never forget it: wolves and lambs look not on one another with gentle eyes.” What then did I need, I who rejected with disgust what was most beautiful in humanity!”
― Comte de Lautréamont, Maldoror and the Complete Works

“…the association of two, or more, apparently alien elements on a plane alien to both is the most potent ignition of poetry.”
― Comte de Lautréamont, Maldoror and the Complete Works

“It is not right that everyone should read the pages which follow; only a few will be able to savour this bitter fruit with impunity. Consequently, shrinking soul, turn on your heels and go back before penetrating further into such uncharted, perilous wastelands. Listen well to what I say: turn on your heels and go back, not forward,[...]”
― Comte de Lautréamont, Maldoror and Poems

“Throughout my life I have seen, without one exception, narrow-shouldered men performing innumerable idiotic acts, brustalising their fellows, and corrupted souls by every means. They call the motive for their actions: fame. Seeing these exhibitions I’ve longed to laugh, with the rest, but that strange imitation was impossible. Taking a penknife with a sharp-edged blade, I slit the flesh at the points joining the lips. For an instant I believed my aim was achieved. I saw in a mirror the mouth ruined at my own will! An error! Besides, the blood gushing freely from the two wounds prevented my distinguishing whether this really was the grin of others. But after some moments of comparison I saw quite clearly that my smile did not resemble that of humans: the fact is, I was not laughing.”
― Comte de Lautréamont

“I do not accept evil. Man is perfect. The soul does not topple. Progress exists. Good is irreducible. Antichrists, accusing angels, eternal sufferings, religions are the product of doubt.”
― Comte de Lautréamont, Maldoror and the Complete Works

“Ma subjectivité et le Créateur, c'est trop pour un cerveau.”
― Comte de Lautréamont, Les Chants de Maldoror

“To construct mechanically the brain of a somniferous tale, it is not enough to dissect nonsense & mightily stupefy the reader's intelligence with renowned doses, so as to paralyze his faculties for the rest of his life by the infallible law of fatigue; one must, besides, with good mesmeric fluid, make it somnambulistically impossible for him to move, against his nature forcing his eyes to cloud over at your own fixed stare.”
― Comte de Lautréamont, Maldoror and the Complete Works

“To describe heaven it is not necessary to transport the materials of earth there. One must leave earth & its materials where they are, so as to beautify life with its ideal. To address Elohim familiarly is an unseemly buffoonery. The best way of showing him gratitude is not by yelling in his ears that he is mighty, that he created the world, that we are wormlets compared to his greatness. He knows it better than we. Men may excuse themselves of informing him of that. The best way of showing him gratitude is to console humanity, to restore all to it, take it by the hand & treat it like a brother. This is more genuine.”
― Comte de Lautréamont, Maldoror and the Complete Works

“If I exist, I am not another”
― Comte de Lautréamont, Maldoror and the Complete Works

“My poetry will consist only in the attack by all means in my power upon Man, that wild beast, and the Creator, who should never have created such vermin. Volumes shall pile upon volumes until the end of my life, but only that one idea will be found therein . . . that one thought ever present in my consciousness!”
― Comte de Lautréamont, Les Chants de Maldoror

“The frontier between your taste and mine is invisible; you will never be able to grasp it, proof that the frontier itself does not exist.”
― Comte de Lautréamont, Les Chants de Maldoror

“He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.”
― Emmanuel Kant

“Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.”
― Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals/On a Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Concerns

“My poor life
This shawl
Frayed on strongboxes full of gold
I roll along with
Dream
And smoke
And the only flame in the universe”
― Blaise Cendrars, Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of the Little Jeanne de France

“Language can only deal meaningfully with a special, restricted segment of reality. The rest, and it is presumably the much larger part, is silence.”
― George Steiner, Language & Silence: Essays on Language, Literature, and the Inhuman

“I am not, I will not be.
I have not, I will not have.
This frightens all children,
And kills fear in the wise.”
― Nāgārjuna

“Lucidity is the wound closest to the sun.”
― Rene Char

“In my land we don't question someone who has been touched deeply.
There is no malign shadow over capsized boats.”
― René Char

“Imagination consists in expelling from reality many incomplete persons, making use of the magical and subversive powers of desire, to obtain their return in the form of a completely satisfying presence. This, then, is the inextinguishable, uncreated reality.”
― René Char

“I have seen apes only at the fair, they must perform tricks, are chained up, a bitter fate, no human has one so hard”
― Alfred Döblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz

“He swore to all the world and to himself that he would remain decent. And as long as he had money, he remained decent. But then he ran out of money, which was a moment he had been waiting for, to show them all what he was made of.”
― Alfred Döblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz

“Chaos is rejecting all you have learned, Chaos is being yourself.”
― Emil Cioran, A Short History of Decay