S K > S's Quotes

“Beauty plus pity-that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I have a sense that God is unfair and preferentially punishes his weak, his dumb, his fat, his lazy. I believe he takes more pleasure in his perfect creatures, and cheers them on like a brainless dad as they run roughshod over the rest of us. He gives us a need for love, and no way to get any. He gives us a desire to be liked, and personal attributes that make us utterly unlikable. Having placed his flawed and needy children in a world of exacting specifications, he deducts the difference between what we have and what we need from our hearts and our self-esteem and our mental health.”
― George Saunders, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”
― Charles Darwin, The Life & Letters of Charles Darwin

“Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.”
― Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

“Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”
― Horace Mann

“The world has become sad because a puppet was once melancholy. The nihilist, that strange martyr who has no faith, who goes to the stake without enthusiasm, and dies for what he does not believe in, is a purely literary product. He was invented by Turgenev, and completed by Dostoevsky. Robespierre came out of the pages of Rousseau as surely as the People's Palace rose out debris of a novel. Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.”
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

“Everything in moderation, including moderation.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Wit is educated insolence.”
― Aristotle

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Blow the candle out, I don't need to see what my thoughts look like.”
― Emile Zola, Germinal

“Good judgement is the result of experience and experience the result of bad judgement.”
― Mark Twain

“A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“The worker picked up Pakhom’s spade, dug a grave, and buried him - six feet from head to heel, exactly the amount of land a man needs.”
― Leo Tolstoy, How Much Land Does a Man Need? and Other Stories

“The further one goes, the better the land seems. ”
― Leo Tolstoy, How Much Land Does a Man Need? and Other Stories

“Religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool.”
― Mark Twain

“Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.”
― seneca, Peace of Mind: De Tranquillitate Animi

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“The sun also shines on the wicked.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand.”
― Seneca

“Leisure without books is death, and burial of a man alive.”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“To wish to be well is a part of becoming well.”
― Seneca

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.”
― Seneca

“Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool.”
― Voltaire

“A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims... but accomplices”
― George Orwell

“Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville