Bennjamin > Bennjamin's Quotes

“I'm very definitely a woman and I enjoy it. ”
― Marilyn Monroe

“The thing I want more than anything else? I want to have children. I used to feel for every child I had, I would adopt another.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“This life is what you make it. No matter what, you're going to mess up sometimes, it's a universal truth. But the good part is you get to decide how you're going to mess it up. Girls will be your friends - they'll act like it anyway. But just remember, some come, some go. The ones that stay with you through everything - they're your true best friends. Don't let go of them. Also remember, sisters make the best friends in the world. As for lovers, well, they'll come and go too. And baby, I hate to say it, most of them - actually pretty much all of them are going to break your heart, but you can't give up because if you give up, you'll never find your soulmate. You'll never find that half who makes you whole and that goes for everything. Just because you fail once, doesn't mean you're gonna fail at everything. Keep trying, hold on, and always, always, always believe in yourself, because if you don't, then who will, sweetie? So keep your head high, keep your chin up, and most importantly, keep smiling, because life's a beautiful thing and there's so much to smile about.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“The bad news: There is no key to the universe. The good news: It was never locked.”
― Swami Beyondananda

“Linguïsten houden er congressen over, filosofen en logici zitten ermee verveeld: het probleem van de zelfreferentie. De kwestie is: kan een taal ooit over iets anders gaan dan over zichzelf? Kan God naar zichzelf verwijzen? Kan ik dat? Een wijsvinger kan niet wijzen naar zichzelf, een oog kan zichzelf niet zien. En toch kijken honden en dwazen inderdaad naar de vinger die wijst, en niet naar de richting waarin gewezen wordt.”
― Patricia De Martelaere, Het onverwachte antwoord

“Als ik denk aan de dood, dan lijkt het griezelig, monsterachtig, ongelooflijk - niet dat deze hand, waarmee ik nu deze dingen schrijf, later zal verrotten als een appel, maar dat ze nu zo snel, zo levendig, zo vlot beweegt - het lijkt hekserij, magie. Het ontstellende, huiveringwekkend bevreemdende is niet dat de maden en wormen uit deze huid zullen breken zonder dat deze hand - nu zo waakzaam, zo snel geïrriteerd door muggen, kleine vliegjes - een vinger zal verroeren - het onvoorstelbare, angstaanjagende zijn de aders die nu kloppen, de poriën die ademen, de zenuwen en spieren die samentrekken, trillen, de verbindingen met dit hoofd - later een uitgevreten schedel - dat alles in beweging tovert. Mijn hand is een dier, een afschuwelijk snel bewegend insekt, een parasiet van het leven in mijn hoofd.”
― Patricia De Martelaere, Nachtboek van een slapeloze

“Is deze wereld dan niet mooi, mooi als een keizerlijk hemelbed waarin nooit meer wordt geslapen, mooi als een maanlandschap al is het onbewoonbaar?”
― Patricia De Martelaere, Nachtboek van een slapeloze

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.”
― Andrew Boyd, Daily Afflictions: The Agony of Being Connected to Everything in the Universe

“He prefers men — it must be true. Wasn’t that the way of it, the most appealing being out of reach?”
― Moriah Densley, Song for Sophia

“What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?”
― Bertolt Brecht

“We are accustomed to the idea that the truth of things may be neither pleasant nor comforting; we are less accustomed to the idea that the truth may be unfruitful.”
― Raymond Tallis, The Explicit Animal: A Defence of Human Consciousness

“There is, in part, the glamour of science, which, since it is so spectacularly and usefully right over so many things, is often given authority where it has none.”
― Raymond Tallis, Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity

“For most of us, for almost all of us, truth can be attained, if at all, only in silence. It is in silence that the human spirit touches the divine.”
― Iris Murdoch, Under the Net

“Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.”
― Iris Murdoch, Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature

“The world, my friend, is one great shipwreck: and man’s motto, "Save yourself if you can."

PS. Voltaire is often attributed the shorter saying: "‎Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats" - this was actually from a Peter Gay review of Voltaire's "Candide". It's a different thing Source: quoteinvestigator.com”
― Voltaire

“How much truth is contained in something can be best determined by making it thoroughly laughable and then watching to see how much joking around it can take. For truth is a matter that can withstand mockery, that is freshened by any ironic gesture directed at it. Whatever cannot withstand satire is false.”
― Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason

“Right-wing women have surveyed the world: they find it a dangerous place. They see that work subjects them to more danger from more men; it increases the risk of sexual exploitation. They see that creativity and originality in their kind are ridiculed; they see women thrown out of the circle of male civilization for having ideas, plans, visions, ambitions. They see that traditional marriage means selling to one man, not hundreds: the better deal. They see that the streets are cold, and that the women on them are tired, sick, and bruised. They see that the money they can earn will not make them independent of men and that they will still have to play the sex games of their kind: at home and at work too. They see no way to make their bodies authentically their own and to survive in the world of men. They know too that the Left has nothing better to offer: leftist men also want wives and whores; leftist men value whores too much and wives too little. Right-wing women are not wrong. They fear that the Left, in stressing impersonal sex and promiscuity as values, will make them more vulnerable to male sexual aggression, and that they will be despised for not liking it. They are not wrong. Right-wing women see that within the system in which they live they cannot make their bodies their own, but they can agree to privatized male ownership: keep it one-on-one, as it were. They know that they are valued for their sex— their sex organs and their reproductive capacity—and so they try to up their value: through cooperation, manipulation, conformity; through displays of affection or attempts at friendship; through submission and obedience; and especially through the use of euphemism—“femininity, ” “total woman, ” “good, ” “maternal instinct, ” “motherly love. ” Their desperation is quiet; they hide their bruises of body and heart; they dress carefully and have good manners; they suffer, they love God, they follow the rules. They see that intelligence displayed in a woman is a flaw, that intelligence realized in a woman is a crime. They see the world they live in and they are not wrong. They use sex and babies to stay valuable because they need a home, food, clothing. They use the traditional intelligence of the female—animal, not human: they do what they have to to survive.”
― Andrea Dworkin, Right-Wing Women

“Nobody is more inferior than those who insist on being equal .”
― Friedrich Nietzsche