Author Quotes

An administration, like a machine, does not create. It carries on.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas - only I don't exactly know what they are!

Try not to turn your life into a race, least of all an obstacle race.

José Bergamín

Truth in art is the unity of a thing with itself: the outward rendered expressive of the inward: the soul made incarnate: the body instinct with spirit. For this reason there is no truth comparable to sorrow.

A persuadable temper might sometimes be as much in favour of happiness as a very resolute character.

Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.

Sholem Aleichem

True human life does not take place in time but always "is" at the "timeless" point where the past becomes the future - a point which we incorrectly label the present. This is a timeless point, and people are free only at this point.

Thou art the cause, and most accursed effect.

William Shakespeare

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death.

She moves the way clocks move. And on her face, as on a clock dial which someone shines a light onto at night, a strange, briefly shown hour stands: a terrifying hour, in which someone dies.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Everyone chases after happiness, not noticing that happiness is at their heels.

My desk, most loyal friend
thank you. You've been with me on
every road I've taken.
My scar and my protection.

Marina Tsvetaeva

Nobody ever told me what to read, or ever put poetry in my way

Isaac Rosenberg

Man is only miserable so far as he thinks himself so.

Jacopo Sannazaro

We shall not have succeeded in demolishing everything unless we demolish the ruins as well. But the only way I can see of doing that is to use them to put up a lot of fine, well-designed buildings.

Negligence is the rust of the soul that corrodes through all her best resolves.

Sometimes I think that Darwin made a mistake and that in fact man is descended from the pig, because eight out of every ten members of the human race are swine, and as crooked as a hog's tail.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

In November, 1964 when I was a patient at the Mayo Clinic I though seriously about killing myself.

Most critical fault-finding, when reduced to its essentials, simply amounts to reproach of the author because he is himself -- thinks, feels, sees, and creates, as himself, instead of seeing and creating in the way the critic would have done.

One can hardly think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of one's soul.

G. K. Chesterton

To feel admiration for a man all through one's married life would, I think, be excessively tedious.

Agatha Christie

Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.

Adrian Mitchell

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863.

William Faulkner

To write weekly, to write daily, to write shortly, to write for busy people catching trains in the morning or for tired people coming home in the evening, is a heartbreaking task for men who know good writing from bad. They do it, but instinctively draw out of harm's way anything precious that might be damaged by contact with the public, or anything sharp that might irritate its skin.

Beautiful... as the fortuitous encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table.

Comte de Lautréamont