Author Quotes

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

Sholem Aleichem

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

I feel that the longest and worst punishment should be reserved for those who slandered God by inventing Hell.

The story of civilization is, in a sense, the story of engineering-that long and arduous struggle to make the forces of nature work for man's good.

L. Sprague de Camp

So do the dark in soul expire, Or live like scorpion girt by fire; So writhes the mind remorse hath riven, Unfit for earth, undoom'd for heaven, Darkness above, despair beneath, Around it flame, within it death.

Expecting to be able to get rid of the competitive drive, first of all, flies in the face of human nature — and little girls certainly have this drive, as much as little boys do, or at least the little girls I have observed in my immediate family have it.

Nothing now remains for us seven but to go back to Stable Hill, proclaim the truth, and take the adventure that Aslan sends us.

Reality even when it is sad is better than illusions. Illusions are at the mercy of any winds that blow. Real happiness must come from within, from a fixed purpose and faith in one's fellow men.

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

Summary riposte
To the dreary wail
There's no knowing what
Love is all about.
Poets know a lot.

The public always prefers to be reassured. There are those whose job this is. There are only too many.

When urbanity decays, civilization suffers and decays with it.

James Norman Hall

Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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

I love Germany so dearly that I hope there will always be two of them.

François Mauriac

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.

If you're a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he's good, the older he gets, the better he writes.

Mickey Spillane

You take a number of small steps which you believe are right, thinking maybe tomorrow somebody will treat this as a dangerous provocation. And then you wait. If there is no reaction, you take another step: courage is only an accumulation of small steps.

György Konrád

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

Please understand the reason why Chinese vegetables taste so good. It is simple. The Chinese do not cook them, they just threaten them!

Jeff Smith (chef)

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

Adrian Mitchell

Nothing is hidden from the eyes of the observing world.

Alexander Pushkin

You can pretend to be serious but you can't pretend to be witty.

Art is a misleading, deceptive superstition; in it we think that we have before us the last, innermost essence of humanity itself; and yet, it merely foists upon us a beautiful product of man, in which are set down all of the egotistical, self-satisfying thoughts and emotions which remain sterile and ineffective in the world of action. And I, imbecile, esteem this product more highly than the human being himself, whom God has created.

Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder

Our minds have a tendency to wander. To duck and feint and keep us at a slight remove from the moment at hand.