Katarina > Katarina's Quotes

“I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
― Isaac Asimov

“Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love. This is something else I've discovered for myself very recently. I present it to you as a hypothesis: Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis. And I say that the mind absorbed in and involved in itself as a self-centered end, to the exclusion of human relationships, can only lead to violence and pain.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“There are so many doors to open. I am impatient to begin."

--Charlie Gordan”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet "for sale", who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence - briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing - cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity. He cannot help suffering, even though he can experience moments of joy and clarity that are absent in the life of his "normal" contemporaries. Not rarely will he suffer from neurosis that results from the situation of a sane man living in an insane society, rather than that of the more conventional neurosis of a sick man trying to adapt himself to a sick society. In the process of going further in his analysis, i.e. of growing to greater independence and productivity,his neurotic symptoms will cure themselves.”
― Erich fromm, The Art of Being

“The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born when we die - although it is the tragic fate of most individuals to die before they are born.”
― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society

“Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love.”
― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

“One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often.”
― Erich Fromm

“If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.”
― Erich Fromm

“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”
― Sigmund Freud

“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.”
― Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”
― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad / Roughing It

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”
― Charles Darwin, The Life & Letters of Charles Darwin

“The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.”
― Nikolai V. Gogol

“How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d”
― Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard

“Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,
For I would ride with you upon the wind,
Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame.”
― William Butler Yeats, The Land of Heart's Desire

“The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.”
― William Butler Yeats

“Someday, somewhere - anywhere, unfailingly, you'll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.”
― Pablo Neruda

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to."

[MovieMaker Magazine #53 - Winter, January 22, 2004 ]”
― Jim Jarmusch

“Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you'll always find despair.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept

“Life is a miserable thing. I have decided to spend my life thinking about it.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, The Schopenhauer Cure

“...the more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety. The more you fail to experience your life fully, the more you will fear death.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
― Mark Twain

“I don't want to die without any scars.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”
― Elie Wiesel

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
― Anne Frank, Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings

“May you live every day of your life.”
― Jonathan Swift

“Not all those who wander are lost.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring