O Zotique > O's Quotes

“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering the animals are our equals.”
― Peter Singer

“The notion that human life is sacred just because it is human life is medieval.”
― Peter Singer

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something.
...Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion. ”
― E.B. White, Here Is New York

“Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.”
― Philip K. Dick

“You necessarily have to be lost, before you’re found.”
― T. Scott McLeod, All That Is Unspoken

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally. A higher paradox confounds the emotion as well as reason and there are long periods in the lives of all of us, when the truth as revealed by faith is hideous, emotionally disturbing, downright repulsive. Witness the dark night of the soul in individual saints . . .”
― Flannery O'Connor

“In the twilight of life, God will not judge us on our earthly possessions and human successes, but on how well we have loved.”
― Saint John of the Cross

“They can be like the sun, words.
They can do for the heart what light can for a field.”
― St. John of the Cross, The Poems of St. John of the Cross

“Now that I no longer desire all, I have it all without desire.”
― St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul

“If a man wishes to be sure of the road he’s traveling on, then he must close his syes and travel in the dark.”
― St. John of the Cross

“I came into the unknown
and stayed there unknowing
rising beyond all science.

I did not know the door
but when I found the way,
unknowing where I was,
I learned enormous things,
but what I felt I cannot say,
for I remained unknowing,
rising beyond all science.

It was the perfect realm
of holiness and peace.
In deepest solitude
I found the narrow way:
a secret giving such release
that I was stunned and stammering,
rising beyond all science.

I was so far inside,
so dazed and far away
my senses were released
from feelings of my own.
My mind had found a surer way:
a knowledge of unknowing,
rising beyond all science.

And he who does arrive
collapses as in sleep,
for all he knew before
now seems a lowly thing,
and so his knowledge grows so deep
that he remains unknowing,
rising beyond all science.

The higher he ascends
the darker is the wood;
it is the shadowy cloud
that clarified the night,
and so the one who understood
remains always unknowing,
rising beyond all science.

This knowledge by unknowing
is such a soaring force
that scholars argue long
but never leave the ground.
Their knowledge always fails the source:
to understand unknowing,
rising beyond all science.

This knowledge is supreme
crossing a blazing height;
though formal reason tries
it crumbles in the dark,
but one who would control the night
by knowledge of unknowing
will rise beyond all science.

And if you wish to hear:
the highest science leads
to an ecstatic feeling
of the most holy Being;
and from his mercy comes his deed:
to let us stay unknowing,
rising beyond all science.”
― St. John of the Cross

“There is nothing better or more necessary than love.”
― St John of the Cross

“ To reach satisfaction in all, desire satisfaction in nothing. To come to possess all, desire the possession of nothing. To arrive at being all, desire to be nothing. To come to the knowledge of all, desire the knowledge of nothing. To come to enjoy what you have not, you must go by a way in which you enjoy not. To come to the possession you have not, you must go by a way in which you possess not. To come to what you are not, you must go by a way in which you are not.  

John of the Cross”
― John of the Cross

“Happiness is not a destination, it's a method of travel.”
― St. John

“Love is the measure by which we shall be judged.”
― St. John of the Cross

“Mi Amado, las montañas,
los valles solitarios nemorosos,
las ínsulas extrañas,
los ríos sonorosos,
el silbo de los aires amorosos,
la noche sosegada
en par de los levantes de la aurora,
la música callada,
la soledad sonora,
la cena que recrea y enamora.

~ San Juan de la Cruz”
― St. John of the Cross

“Have a great love for those who contradict and fail to love you, for in this way love is begotten in a heart that has no love.”
― John of the Cross

“In the evening we shall be examined on love.”
― St. John of the Cross

“If you do not learn to deny yourself, you can make no progress in perfection.”
― St. John of the Cross

“To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend.”
― Jacques Derrida

“What cannot be said above all must not be silenced but written.”
― Jacques Derrida

“Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: 'Here are our monsters,' without immediately turning the monsters into pets.”
― Jacques Derrida

“I always dream of a pen that would be a syringe.”
― Jacques Derrida, Jacques Derrida

“No one gets angry at a mathematician or a physicist whom he or she doesn't understand, or at someone who speaks a foreign language, but rather at someone who tampers with your own language.”
― Jacques Derrida

“I speak only one language, and it is not my own.”
― Jacques Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other: or, The Prosthesis of Origin