Jon > Jon's Quotes

“In every crowd are certain persons who seem just like the rest, yet they bear amazing messages.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Night Flight

“The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body.The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.”
― Milan Kundera, Ignorance

“Nobody can hurt me without my permission.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Everyone strives to attain the Law,' answers the man, 'how does it come about, then, that in all these years no one has come seeking admittance but me?' The doorkeeper perceives that the man is nearing his end and his hearing is failing, so he bellows in his ear: 'No one but you could gain admittance through this door, since this door was intended for you. I am now going to shut it.”
― Kafka, Franz

“Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death. So long as you are alive, your case is doubtful; you have a right only to their skepticism.”
― Albert Camus, The Fall

“Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness.
Listen to it carefully.”
― Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself.”
― Richard Bach, Illusions

“It is hard work and great art to make life not so serious.”
― John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire

“The only way you get Americans to notice anything is to tax them or draft them or kill them.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“You take every opportunity given you in this world, even if you have too many opportunities. One day, the opportunities stop, you know.”
― John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire

“I believe that words uttered in passion contain a greater living truth than do those words which express thoughts rationally conceived. It is blood that moves the body. Words are not meant to stir the air only: they are capable of moving greater things.”
― Natsume Soseki, Kokoro

“No matter how fierce was the passion that gripped him, the fact is he was paralyzed, transfixed by the contemplation of his own past. Only something so momentous as to drive from his consciousness all thoughts of before and after could have propelled him forward. And with his eyes fixed on the past, he had no choice but to continue along its trajectory.”
― Natsume Sōseki, Kokoro

“Does a soldier go to war in order to kill the enemy? no, he goes in order to die for his country.

Does a wife want to show her husband how happy she is? no, she wants him to see how she suffers in order to make him happy

Does the husband go to work thinking he will find personal fulfillment there? no, he is giving his sweat and tears for the good of the family

And so it goes on: sons give up their dreams to please their parents, parents give up their lives in order to please their children; pain and suffering are used to justify the one thing that should bring only LOVE..”
― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

“It's interesting how young poets think of death while old fogies think of girls.”
― Bohumil Hrabal

“We are all exceptional cases. We all want to appeal against something! Each of us insists on being innocent at all cost, even if he has to accuse the whole human race and heaven itself.”
― Albert Camus, The Fall

“In each of us there is another whom we do not know.

(quoted in Incognito )”
― C.G. Jung, Civilization in Transition

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

“What is stronger in us — passion or habit? Or are all the violent impulses, all the whirl of our desires and turbulent passions, only the consequence of our ardent age, and is it only through youth that they seem deep and shattering?”
― Nikolai Gogol

“Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number-
Shake your chains to earth like
dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many-they are few.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Masque of Anarchy: Written on Occasion of the Massacre at Manchester