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Quotes by Writer
"Sometimes we feel the loss of a prejudice as a loss of vigor."
23
"No one can give anyone else the gift of the idyll; only an animal can do so, because only animals were not expelled from Paradise. The love between dog and man is idyllic. It knows no conflicts, no hair-raising scenes; it knows no development."
23
"The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain."
23
"Facts or opinions which are to pass through the hands of so many, to be misconceived by folly in one, and ignorance in another, can hardly have much truth left."
23
"The language of marriage is often a language of ownership, not a language of partnership."
23
"But that's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and worth the doing."
23
"That's what the cat said to the canary when he swallowed him - 'You'll be all right.'"
23
"Nudity is the uniform of the other side... nudity is a shroud."
23
"Even if what you're working on doesn't go anywhere, it will help you with the next thing you're doing. Make yourself available for something to happen. Give it a shot."
23
"I spend about eight months researching and outlining my book."
23
"Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class -- whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy."
23
"It's a lucky child that knows that they're a genius, unaimed and all that."
23
"How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That's a good thing, but one mustn't make a virtue of it, or a profession... Insofar as I love life, I love the hills of the Domain of Estre, but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate. And beyond that, I am ignorant, I hope."
23
"Besides being the world the kind of sadness that can not be expressed in tears. You can not explain it to anyone. Unable to take any shape, settles quietly in the bottom of the heart as snow during the windless night."
22
"Literature... is the union of suffering with the instinct for form."
22
"How I hate those who are dedicated to producing conformity."
22
"None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them."
22
"For me, running is both exercise and a metaphor. Running day after day, piling up the races, bit by bit I raise the bar, and by clearing each level I elevate myself. At least that's why I've put in the effort day after day: to raise my own level. I'm no great runner, by any means. I'm at an ordinary " or perhaps more like mediocre " level. But that's not the point. The point is whether or not I improved over yesterday. In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be."
22
"It is a paradox that as we reach out prime, we also see there is a place where it finishes."
22
"I read all the time. I was reading a book I admire very much by Alice McDermot called Charming Billy."
22
"I saw Mussolini tirelessly contemplate a parade of thousands of young men."
22
"A woman has to be twice as good as a man to go half as far."
22
"But every time our ability to access information and to communicate it to others is improved, in some sense we have achieved an increase over natural intelligence."
22
"In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation."
22
"Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!"
22
"Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried."
22
"I feel that everyone who wants to say anything, do anything, should be able to say anything or do anything, within the limits of not hurting another person."
22
"Action is the real measure of intelligence."
22
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