Philosophical Fiction Quotes

“To talk nonsense in one’s own way is almost better than to talk a truth that’s someone else’s”
― Fydor Dostoevsky

“Kovit's smile was deeply amused. "You're living in a fantasy world. I eat pain, and that scares people." "Sure it does. But lots of people are scary-- terrorists, fascists, racists. That doesn't mean they're not human, much as some people might wish." Fabricio's eyes met Kovit's. "You're a sentient, thinking being. You choose who you hurt, and if you hurt someone." Fabricio made a frustrated noise. "You're not a fucking avalanche mowing down everything in its path.”
― Rebecca Schaeffer, When Villains Rise

“There was no meaning in why he was here, but he was, and that was enough.”
― AkshatThakur

“Even as he spoke, the boy appeared to have forgotten the subject, as if it was a balloon he had abandoned to the sky.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

“I think it is easy to imagine there are easier paths," she said, realising something for the first time. "But maybe there are no easy paths. There are just paths. In one life, I might be married. In another, I might be working in a shop. I might have said yes to this cute guy who asked me out for a coffee. In another I might be researching glaciers in the Arctic Circle. In another, I might be an Olympic swimming champion. Who knows? Every second of every day we are entering a new universe. And we spend so much time wishing our lives were different, comparing ourselves to other people and to other versions of ourselves, when really most lives contain degrees of good and degrees of bad.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“Popular people sometimes have to laugh at things they don't find very funny, do things they don't particularly want to, with people whose company they don't particularly enjoy. Not me. I had decided, years ago, that if the choice was between that or flying solo, then I'd fly solo. It was safer that way. Grief is the price we pay for love, so they say. The price is far too high.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“we stare into pages hoping to find meaning in a universe that couldn’t care less.And still—flipping pages desperately, only to be met with footnotes of our own insignificance.”
― Onu

“Oh it cannot be denied that in the monastery he believed completely in miracles, but in my experience miracles never bother a realist. It is not miracles that incline a realist towards faith. The true realist, if he is not a believer, will invariably find within himself the strength and the ability not to believe in miracles either, and if a miracle stands before him as a incontrovertible fact, he will sooner disbelieve his senses than admit that fact. And even if he does admit it, it will be as a fact of nature, but one that until now has been obscure to him. In the realist it is not faith that is born of miracles, but miracles of faith. Once a realist believes, his realism inexorably compels him to admit miracles too. The Apostle Thomas declared that he would not belive until he saw, and when he saw, said: 'mMy Lord and my God.' Was it the miracle that had made him believe? The likeliest explanation is that it was not, and that he came to believe for the sole reason that he wanted to believe and, perhaps, in the inmost corners of his being already fully believed, even when he said: 'Except I shall see... I will not believe.' [John 20:25]”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Oh it cannot be denied that in the monastery he believed completely in miracles, but in my experience miracles never bother a realist. It is not miracles that incline a realist towards faith. The true realist, if he is not a believer, will invariably find within himself the strength and the ability not to believe in miracles either, and if a miracle stands before him as a incontrovertible fact, he will sooner disbelieve his senses than admit that fact. And even if he does admit it, it will be as a fact of nature, but one that until now has been obscure to him. In the realist it is not faith that is born of miracles, but miracles of faith. Once a realist believes, his realism inexorably compels him to admit miracles too. The Apostle Thomas declared that he would not belive until he saw, and when he saw, said: 'My Lord and my God.' Was it the miracle that had made him believe? The likeliest explanation is that it was not, and that he came to believe for the sole reason that he wanted to believe and, perhaps, in the inmost corners of his being already fully believed, even when he said: 'Except I shall see... I will not believe.' [John 20:25]”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Bütün hayat birdir; 'kimse bir ada değildir,' Shakespeare'in eski zamanlarda söylediği gibi.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“At some point in time, the matter of reason came into our species' thought process: the word they sought was why? Thus, began the Cause: the search for answers, for meaning, and, perhaps, for truth.”
― Don Smith, The Cause of Reason - One Woman's Search for Peace

“It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”
― Aldous Huxley, Island

“You will always struggle with not feeling productive until you accept that your own joy can be something you produce.”
― Hank Green, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

“Fabricio smiled slightly. "I'm good with people." "Good at manipulating them, you mean?" He shrugged. "Isn't that what all human interactions are? We want people to think certain things, behave certain ways. Believe us to be certain types of people.”
― Rebecca Schaeffer, When Villains Rise

“When light brings me sorrow
And dark gives me peace
It's difficult to reach tomorrow
And hope blooms in endings”
― Jazalyn, vViIrRuUsS: I Never Forget

“I can't die
It's a paradox
I've got the consciousness here”
― Jazalyn, vViIrRuUsS: I Never Forget

“This world needs me;
If I don't exist
The world doesn't exist

The World Ends With Me”
― Jazalyn, vViIrRuUsS: I Never Forget

“For most of my life there was a part of me that believed I didn't belong here -- in Blackdamp, in Granny's house. in this world. And that part of me ached at the sight of my door, at the thought of home. I wanted so badly to feel like I belonged, and it seemed so much easier to believe that my belonging waited on the other side of my door in some place I'd never seen than to believe that it was here, somewhere around me, waiting for me to find it. To make it so.”
― Ashley Blooms, Where I Can't Follow

“I wasn't sure I would recognize Joy if I saw it in an empty room. We were strangers at best, though most days it felt like we were mortal enemies. I could rely on Doubt and Worry and even Grief. I inhaled Stress and exhaled Obligation. Joy was something different, though. Something strange and feral and bright, and Carver wore it so well.”
― Ashley Blooms, Where I Can't Follow

“I can't keep going on like this," Julie said, "I've tried everything I can think of. I tried doing it the Reverend's way my whole life. The doctors' ways. I tried it without therapy, without meds. I joined a bunch of online groups. All these people preaching love and light and how you can just manifest money and happiness, but you can't manifest your way out of this. It's bullshit. And I'm just so tired.”
― Ashley Blooms, Where I Can't Follow

“She imagined, now, what it would be like to accept herself completely. Every mistake she had ever made. Every mark on her body. Every dream she hadn't reached or pain she had felt. Every lust or longing she had suppressed. She imagined accepting it all. The way she accepted nature. The way she accepted a glacier or a puffin or the breach of a whale. She imagined seeing herself as just another brilliant freak of nature. Just another sentient animal, trying their best. And in doing so, she imagined what it was like to be free.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“To be a human was to continually dumb the world down into an understandable story that keeps things simple.”
― Matt Haigh

“The paradox of volcanoes was that they were symbols of destruction but also life. Once the lava slows and cools, it solidifies and then breaks down over time to become soil -- rich, fertile, soil. She wasn't a black hole, she decided. She was a volcano. And like a volcano she couldn't run away from herself. She'd have to stay there and tend to that wasteland. She could plant a forest inside herself.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“They don’t care
About the truth:
They use lies
For power
And condemn innocents

They pretend
To be good
But they are
The worst of all

We care
And we will fight
For morality”
― jazalyn, vViIrRuUsS: I Never Forget

“Existence, for me, is not merely suffering — it is a meticulous form of torture disguised as life. I move through a world that calls itself shared, yet what I carry is mine alone: a private apocalypse, constant and precise. Others ache, yes — but not like this. Not like me.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia

“The ones we remember are not always the ones we should."

— Names on a Crooked Wall”
― Saddam Abuallail, Names on a Crooked Wall: A Novel of Memory, Shadows, and the Names We Leave Behind