Reed Road surfing > Reed Road surfing's Quotes

“Every weirdo in the world is on my wavelength.”
― Thomas Pynchon

“For there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.”
― Herman Melville

“I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“The general public has long been divided into two parts; those who think that science can do anything and those who are afraid it will.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon

“Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir'd, or coerc'd, only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent, to be left within the reach of anyone in Power,- who need but touch her, and all her Credit is in the instant vanish'd, as if it had never been. She needs rather to be tended lovingly and honorably by fabulists and counterfeiters, Ballad-Mongers and Cranks of ev'ry Radius, Masters of Disguise to provide her the Costume, Toilette, and Bearing, and Speech nimble enough to keep her beyond the Desires, or even the Curiosity, of Government.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon

“Why should things be easy to understand?”
― Thomas Pynchon

“Time is never wasted if you remember to bring along something to read.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
― Leo Tolstoy , Anna Karenina

“Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself. ”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“Writing laws is easy, but governing is difficult.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“As you are now so once were we.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“Listen to many, speak to a few.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“What do you read, my lord?
Hamlet: Words, words, words.
Lord Polonius: What is the matter, my lord?
Hamlet: Between who?
Lord Polonius: I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.”
― William Shakespeare

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“we interpret life at moments of the deepest desperation.”
― Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives

“A man's at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he dont want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there. It aint the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it. You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.”
― Honore de Balzac

“To die, - To sleep, - To sleep!
Perchance to dream: - ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at
it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know
not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your
gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment,
that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one
now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“The true way goes over a rope which is not stretched at any great height but just above the ground. It seems more designed to make people stumble than to be walked upon.”
― Franz Kafka

“When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.”
― Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

“To whom shall I hire myself out? What beast should I adore? What holy image is attacked? What hearts shall I break? What lies shall I uphold? In what blood tread?”
― Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell and The Drunken Boat

“If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”
― Henry James

“A man so habituated to corruption that he would happily pay for the pleasure of selling himself.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Sentimental Education

“Hal, if I tell thee a lie, spit in my face, call me horse.”
― William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 1