Fausto Cercignani Quotes

62 Sourced Quotes

A secret remains a secret until you make someone promise never to reveal it.

Fausto Cercignani
It is certainly a good thing always to forgive with generosity, but it is no doubt just never to forget the wrongs received: they belong to the route that leads to inner maturity.

Fausto Cercignani
Do not confuse fantasy with imagination: the former consumes itself in daydreaming, the latter stimulates creativity in the arts and in the sciences.

Fausto Cercignani
Secret thoughts are only half free: they fly undisturbed in the skies of the inner freedom, but they can never leave them.

Fausto Cercignani
Love the others and you will be loved! is a saying that might sound as a terrible and unjust accusation against all the innocents that have been hated and perhaps even tortured and killed.

Fausto Cercignani
If you have no aim, you need not worry about the means.

Fausto Cercignani
Order is a necessity for everyone, but not everyone understands it in the same way.

Fausto Cercignani
Genuine living and mere vegetating have only breathing in common (and a few other things).

Fausto Cercignani
Courtesy is fundamental: sometimes it keeps at bay even snarling people.

Fausto Cercignani
Perhaps it is not true that a man becomes what he dreams ; but if he does not dream, what kind of a man is he?

Fausto Cercignani
Perfection is the dream of imperfection that refuses to wake up.

Fausto Cercignani
If you are living in the past or in the future, you will never find a meaning in the present.

Fausto Cercignani
Your will cannot always choose the path; very often the route is determined by chance or by the will of others.

Fausto Cercignani
They say there is a difference between actual temperature and perceived temperature, but in the bearable heaviness of being the actual measure is no doubt the weight we perceive.

Fausto Cercignani
If you talk to the shadows,
at least you know them well
and the words, all of them,
unfold themselves with ease
on muddled walls and streets,
when dusk comes on.

Fausto Cercignani
No form and no degree of alleged liberty can justify calumny or the publication of calumnious material.

Fausto Cercignani
Your identity is like your shadow: not always visible and yet always present.

Fausto Cercignani
Stellar wars are a sort of parallel reality in the filmic imagination, terrestrial wars are still today a harsh daily reality.

Fausto Cercignani
If the unconscious is an abyss, how could Sigmund Freud get out of it?

Fausto Cercignani
Even good arguments fail, if they are spiced with digressions.

Fausto Cercignani
Inner freedom demands the rejection of any imposition that injures our dignity.

Fausto Cercignani
Wishing to dare serves no purpose at all, if it remains a wish.

Fausto Cercignani
If you refuse to take account of theory, then you have forgotten that practice is often an offspring of theory.

Fausto Cercignani
Personal dignity is to be measured with the yardstick of one's conscience, not with that of other people's judgement.

Fausto Cercignani
The thesis that the human being seeks God because of the disorder he perceives in himself does not take into account that the human being seems to prefer disorder.

Fausto Cercignani
As long as his strength permits, the poor mortal must always climb new mountains.

Fausto Cercignani
When one must fight, one had better do it without hesitation, according to his own nature.

Fausto Cercignani
A negative answer may sometimes annoy, but an ambiguous reaction with yes and no (or even nyes) may be much more irritating.

Fausto Cercignani
If you have never had a dream, perhaps you have only dreamt to be alive.

Fausto Cercignani
If you persevere in your rancor, you do nothing but keep feeding yourself on poison.

Fausto Cercignani