Chu-lan Maria > Chu-lan's Quotes

“Liberty and love
These two I must have.
For my love I’ll sacrifice
My life.
For liberty I’ll sacrifice
My love.”
― Sandor Petofi

“Zar pitoma kućna ptica da bude
Orao, koji
Nekad je pandže
Vihoru bjesnom
u leđa zarivô
I jahao na njem -
Pobjednik njegov?
Zar vatreni mladić
Da građanin bude,
Što, miran i mlitav, ramenima sliježe
I klima glavom
U spavaćoj kapi?

Ne može mene
Napustiti žar,
Plemenit gnjev moj.
Presahnuo nije
U mojemu srcu
Divlji i bučni planinski potok,
A bome i ne će.
Mirniji samo
Posta mu tok,
Jer poljima ravnim
Vodi ga put -
Sadašnjost to je
Bez brijega i dola.
Al tu je budućnost!
Divljih je stijena
I ponora puna!”
― Sándor Petőfi

“Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.”
― Plato

“Be there for others, but never leave yourself behind.”
― Dodinsky, In the Garden of Thoughts: Be Your Best Self

“...for my greatest skill has been to want but little.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“However mean your life is, meet and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its doors as early in the spring. Cultivate property like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts… Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”
― Franz Kafka

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”
― Franz Kafka

“Real life wasn’t a game. In a game, what is required is rashness, to strike back without any hesitation. In real life, there are many things to consider. There is a need to pick the most rational course of action. Not retaliating was a bit depressing, but it was better than putting on a show for others.”
― Gu Man, 微微一笑很倾城 [Just One Smile Is Very Alluring]

“如果世界上曾经有那个人出现过，其他人都会变成将就。而我不愿意将就。”
― 顾漫

“The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know; our knowledge of our ignorance. For this indeed, is the main source of our ignorance - the fact that our knowledge can be only finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.”
― Karl Popper

“A high degree of intellect tends to make a man unsocial.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims

“We will gradually become indifferent to what goes on in the minds of other people when we acquire a knowledge of the superficial nature of their thoughts, the narrowness of their views and of the number of their errors. Whoever attaches a lot of value to the opinions of others pays them too much honor.”
― Schopenhauer, Arthur, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer

“A sense of humour is the only divine quality of man”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“It is a wise thing to be polite; consequently, it is a stupid thing to be rude. To make enemies by unnecessary and willful incivility, is just as insane a proceeding as to set your house on fire. For politeness is like a counter--an avowedly false coin, with which it is foolish to be stingy.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims

“The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

“... that when you're buying books, you're optimistically thinking you're buying the time to read them.
(Paraphrase of Schopenhauer)”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Der Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will.

Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

“It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

“Compassion is the basis of morality.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“What disturbs and depresses young people is the hunt for happiness on the firm assumption that it must be met with in life. From this arises constantly deluded hope and so also dissatisfaction. Deceptive images of a vague happiness hover before us in our dreams, and we search in vain for their original. Much would have been gained if, through timely advice and instruction, young people could have had eradicated from their minds the erroneous notion that the world has a great deal to offer them.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Treat a work of art like a prince: let it speak to you first.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

“I have not yet spoken my last word about women. I believe that if a woman succeeds in withdrawing from the mass, or rather raising herself from above the mass, she grows ceaselessly and more than a man.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy