Weve tried to select quotes that, thematically, are in line with the maze, and others that lead

to dead ends, contradictions, provocations, humor, or even those that have some mystery in its own obviousness.

Quotes Livre 2.0

aMAZEme
BLAKE One thought fills immensity. What is now proved was once only imagin'd. The cistern contains: the fountain overflows. Exuberance is Beauty. William Blake - Proverbs of Hell.

BORGES I know of one Greek labyrinth which is a single straight line. Writing is nothing more than a guided dream. I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. Nothing is built on stone; all is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is. Reality is not always probable, or likely.

Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal. I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books. Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time. The mind was dreaming. The world was its dream. On the back part of the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realised that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it bounded. The Aleph's diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror's face, let us say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me; I saw in a backyard of Soler Street the same tiles that thirty years before I'd seen in the entrance of a house in Fray Bentos; I saw bunches of grapes, snow, tobacco, lodes of metal, steam; I saw convex equatorial deserts and each one of their grains of sand; I saw a woman in Inverness whom I shall never forget; I saw her tangled hair, her tall figure, I saw the cancer in her breast; I saw a ring of baked mud in a sidewalk, where before there had been a tree; I saw a summer house in Adrogu and a copy of the first English translation of Pliny -- Philemon Holland's -- and all at the same time saw each letter on each page (as a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not get scrambled and lost overnight); I saw a sunset in Quertaro that seemed to reflect the colour of a rose in Bengal; I saw my empty bedroom; I saw in a closet in Alkmaar a terrestrial globe

between two mirrors that multiplied it endlessly; I saw horses with flowing manes on a shore of the Caspian Sea at dawn; I saw the delicate bone structure of a hand; I saw the survivors of a battle sending out picture postcards; I saw in a showcase in Mirzapur a pack of Spanish playing cards; I saw the slanting shadows of ferns on a greenhouse floor; I saw tigers, pistons, bison, tides, and armies; I saw all the ants on the planet; I saw a Persian astrolabe; I saw in the drawer of a writing table (and the handwriting made me tremble) unbelievable, obscene, detailed letters, which Beatriz had written to Carlos Argentino; I saw a monument I worshipped in the Chacarita cemetery; I saw the rotted dust and bones that had once deliciously been Beatriz Viterbo; I saw the circulation of my own dark blood; I saw the coupling of love and the modification of death; I saw the Aleph from every point and angle, and in the Aleph I saw the earth and in the earth the Aleph and in the Aleph the earth; I saw my own face and my own bowels; I saw your face; and I felt dizzy and wept, for my eyes had seen that secret and conjectured object whose name is common to all men but which no man has looked upon -- the unimaginable universe. I felt infinite wonder, infinite pity. You who read me, are You sure of understanding my language? Through the years, a man peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, tools, stars, horses and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his own face. Estoy solo y no hay nadie en el espejo. All men who repeat one line of Shakespeare are William Shakespeare. Jorge Luis Borges

BOULEZ The aim of music is not to express feelings but to express music. It is not a vessel into which the composer distills his soul drop by drop, but a labyrinth with no beginning and no end, full of new paths to discover, where mystery remains eternal. Pierre Boulez

CALVINO What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space. A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say. Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places. In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven't Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn't Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody's Read So It's As

If You Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress, where other troops are holding out: the Books You've Been Planning Top Read For Ages, the Books You've Been Hunting For Years Without Success, the Books Dealing With Something You're Working On At The Moment, the Books You Want To Own So They'll Be Handy Just In Case, the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer, the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves, the Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified, Now you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array that is, to be sure, very large but still calculable in a finite number; but this relative relief is then undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time To Reread and the Books You've Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It's Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them. What harbor can receive you more securely than a great library? Italo Calvino

BUDDHA Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth, so virtue appears from good deeds, and wisdom appears from a pure and peaceful mind. To walk safely through the maze of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue. Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence. Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.

However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them? In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true. It is better to travel well than to arrive. Unity can only be manifested by the Binary. Unity itself and the idea of Unity are already two. Buddha

SENECA They that mistake life's accessories for life itself are like them that go too fast in a maze: their very haste confuses them Seneca

EMERSON The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. Ralph Waldo Emerson

EPICTETUS In order to please others, we loose our hold on our lifes purpose. Epictetus

BACON Nature is a labyrinth in which the very haste you move with will make you lose your way. Francis Bacon GIBRAN Sadness is but a wall between two gardens. Kahlil Gibran

CARROLL Always speak the truth, think before you speak, and write it down afterwards. Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop. 'But I don't want to go among mad people,' said Alice. 'Oh, you can't help that,' said the cat. 'We're all mad here.' Contrariwise, if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic. Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here? The Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to. Alice: I don't much care where. The Cat: Then it doesn't much matter which way you go. Alice: so long as I get somewhere. The Cat: Oh, you're sure to do that, if only you walk long enough. Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it. Sentence first, verdict afterwards. Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.

If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there. Lewis Carroll

ANDRADE And we, long time ago shouted yes! to eternity. Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional ... We suffer not because our team lost, but for the suffocated euphoria.

What about now, Jos? The partys over, the lights are off, the crowds gone, the nights gone cold, what about now, Jos? You, what about now? You, who are nameless, who mocks the others, you who writes verses who loves, protests

What about now, Jos? You have no wife,

you have no speech you have no affection You cant drink, you cant smoke, you cant even spit The nights gone cold, the day didnt come, the tram didnt come, laughter didnt come utopia didnt come and everything is over and everything fled and everything rotted What about now, Jos?

What about now, Jos? Your sweet words, your feverish instant, your feasting and fasting, your library, your gold mine, your glass suit, your incoherence, your hate ... What about now?

Key in hand you want to open the door, but there's no door; You want to die in the sea, but the sea has dried; you want to go to Minas but Minas is no longer there. Jos, what about now? If you screamed, if you moaned, if you played a Viennese waltz, if you slept, if you were tired, if you died But you dont die, youre hard, Jos! Alone in the dark like a wild animal, without theogony, without a naked wall to lean against, without a black horse that flees galloping,

you march, Jos! Jos, to where?

Definitive, as everything that is simple. Our pain doesnt come from the things that weve lived, but from the things that were dreamed up and not acquired. For all those kisses canceled, for eternity. Carlos Drummond de Andrade

ECO A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams. But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear. Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth. Umberto Eco

ELIOT In my beginning is my end. Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself. Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are? It's not wise to violate rules until you know how to observe them. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

The Hollow Men Mistah Kurtz -- he dead.

A penny for the Old Guy

We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats' feet over broken glass In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed

With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death's dream kingdom These do not appear: There, the eyes are Sunlight on a broken column There, is a tree swinging And voices are In the wind's singing More distant and more solemn Than a fading star. Let me be no nearer In death's dream kingdom Let me also wear Such deliberate disguises Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves

In a field Behaving as the wind behaves No nearer --

Not that final meeting In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man's hand Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this In death's other kingdom Waking alone At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness Lips that would kiss

Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless The eyes reappear As the perpetual star Multifoliate rose Of death's twilight kingdom The hope only Of empty men.

Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is Life is For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper. T.S. Eliot

EINSTEIN A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be. A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem. A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction. Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized. Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love. I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty. I have just got a new theory of eternity. I never think of the future - it comes soon enough. If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts. Einstein

CHURCHILL A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. A joke is a very serious thing. A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope. Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed. Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference. Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all. Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential. Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. Difficulties mastered are opportunities won. He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire. Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have. However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. I am easily satisfied with the very best. Winston Churchill

AUDEN Looking up the stars, I know quite well That for all they care, I can go to Hell Here am I, here are you: But what does it mean? What are we going to do?

W. H. Auden

MARQUEZ He who awaits much can expect little. No, not rich. I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing. A person doesn't die when he should but when he can. I love you not for whom you are, but who I am when I'm by your side Gabriel Garca Mrquez

NIETZSCHE 'The labyrinthine man never seeks the truth but always and only his Ariadne. A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything. A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything. A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness. All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking. All truth is simple... is that not doubly a lie?

And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. Art raises its head where creeds relax. Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies. Do whatever you will, but first be such as are able to will. Faith: not wanting to know what is true. Fear is the mother of morality. He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either. I love those who do not know how to live for today. Love is not consolation. It is light. Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory it too good. Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.

Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation. One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. Success has always been a great liar. The future influences the present just as much as the past. The lie is a condition of life. There are no facts, only interpretations.

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness. There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

We have art in order not to die of the truth. Friedrich Nietzsche

RIMBAUD I is another. Life is the farce which everyone has to perform. It is found again. What? Eternity. It is the sea Gone with the sun. I believe that I am in hell, therefore I am there. Our pale reason hides the infinite from us! Rimbaud KAFKA Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached. I will never find a way through this labyrinth The decisive moment in human evolution is perpetual A cage went in search of a bird. There is a goal, but no way; what we call a way is hesitation.

A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made. Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza. Evil is whatever distracts. He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek will be found. Hiding places there are innumerable, escape is only one, but possibilities of escape, again, are as many as hiding places. In the fight between you and the world, back the world. It is often safer to be in chains than to be free. The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support.

If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow? Franz Kafka

HOMER Victory passes back and forth between men. I have gone through what no other mortal on earth has gone through; I put my lips to the hands of the man who has killed my children. Wise to resolve, and patient to perform. Homer
MANN

War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace. We are most likely to get angry and excited in our opposition to some idea when we ourselves are not quite certain of our own position, and are inwardly tempted to take the other side. Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil. Love stands opposed to death. It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death. Time cools, time clarifies, no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours. Why does almost everything seem to me like its own parody? Why must I think that almost all, no, all the methods and conventions of art today are good for parody only? A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth. Thomas Mann

MILTON Truth is as impossible to be soiled by any outward touch as the sunbeam. A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself. Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n. Milton

SHOPENHAUER The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable. Life is a business that does not cover the costs.

Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost. Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills. Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth. My body and my will are one. Arthur Schopenhauer

STRINDBERG I Dream Therefore I Am. August Strindberg RENOIR I've been forty years discovering that the queen of all colors is black. Pierre-Auguste Renoir

FRANKLIN All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move. Love your Enemies, for they tell you your Faults. A place for everything, everything in its place. All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones. Admiration is the daughter of ignorance. Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.

Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing. By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out. Energy and persistence conquer all things. We do not stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing! Benjamin Franklin OBAMA Yes, we can. Barack Obama

RUSSELL A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it. All movements go too far. Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery. I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong. Bertrand Russell

BRECHT Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are. Don't be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life.

Everyone needs help from everyone. Sometimes it's more important to be human, than to have good taste. Temptation to behave is terrible. What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone? Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes. Why be a man when you can be a success? The river that everything drags is known as violent, but nobody calls violent the margins that arrest him. It's all right to hesitate if you then go ahead. Bertold Brecht

BIBLE The Truth Will Set You Free Bible

PASCAL

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone. All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling. Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth. If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.

Blaise Pascal

TWAIN

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything. Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear. A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read. A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval. All generalizations are false, including this one. Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.

All right, then, I'll go to hell. All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure. Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today. Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint. Better a broken promise than none at all. Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities. 'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read.

Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get. Denial ain't just a river in Egypt. Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest. Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain. Don't let schooling interfere with your education. Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't. Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please. It is easier to stay out than get out. Mark Twain

VANGELIER

Ive found myself. I'm lost! In part, I totally agree with you! A lost Minotaur in the maze of absence...in the absence of the maze... I have no horizons. I have no limits. A Labyrinth of fake entrances, exits that exit, straight curves, straight lines, overturned abysses, brittle sand stones, blunt edges, filled holes, evident secret pathways, compressed stars, wide valleys, unbridgeable straits, blinding thick rain, longitudinal sea currents, invisible avalanches, still winds, inaudible requests, mislaid sentences, in a dark pyramid, As tall as an abyss, as deep as the sky, without echoes, smooth at touch, worn out by weary fingers, which point to the nothing, which is near, and has always been.

Now here, nowhere... Each person, for better or for worse, is part of my personal labyrinth. In the Labyrinth, "look up" is the only way out. Im eternal, I do not exist Maxime Vangelier

OTOOLE I have no memories I'm prepared to share with you. Dying is easy. Comedy is hard. Peter O'Toole

SHAKESPEARE

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool. Better three hours too soon than a minute too late. Brevity is the soul of wit. Having nothing, nothing can he lose. Hell is empty and all the devils are here. In time we hate that which we often fear. For my part, it was Greek to me.

I say there is no darkness but ignorance. I wasted time, and now doth time waste me. Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance? An overflow of good converts to bad. It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves. Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. O! Let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven; keep me in temper; I would not be mad! The attempt and not the deed confounds us. Speak low, if you speak love. No legacy is so rich as honesty. The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact. The wheel is come full circle. To be, or not to be: that is the question. We are time's subjects, and time bids be gone. What is past is prologue. William Shakespeare

ROSA

I know almost nothing-but I have my doubts about many things. Guimares Rosa

COWLEY Life is an incurable disease. Nothing is to come, and nothing past: But an eternal now, does always last. The world's a scene of changes, and to be constant, in nature were inconstancy. Abraham Cowley PRADO The metaphor is the guardian of reality. Adlia Prado

KUROSAWA In a mad world, only the mad are sane. Man is a genius when he is dreaming. Akira Kurosawa

CAMUS A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession. A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower. Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time. Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question. Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny. Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better. Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend. Integrity has no need of rules. Albert Camus

SAINT-EXUPERY

You are responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose. What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well. Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them. And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye. The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves, but in our attitude towards them.

Tell me who admires and loves you, and I will tell you who you are. I know but one freedom, and that is the freedom of the mind. War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus. The one thing that matters is the effort. Antoine de Saint-Exupery

HUXLEY

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one, it comes as sincerely from the author's soul. A fanatic is a man who consciously over compensates a secret doubt. An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie. Chastity - the most unnatural of all the sexual perversions. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead. Cynical realism is the intelligent man's best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation. Dream in a pragmatic way. Aldous Huxley

CHEKHOV Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out. My mother-in-law is 75, and my wife 42. What time is it?

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry. Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something. Only entropy comes easy. Man is what he believes. Anton Chekhov

ARISTOTLE A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one. All men by nature desire knowledge. At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst. Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them. Education is the best provision for old age. Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully. Change in all things is sweet. Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular. Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved. Quality is not an act, it is a habit. Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

Hope is the dream of a waking man. Aristotle

ARCHIMEDES Give me a lever long enough and I shall move the world. Archimedes

A conclusion is the place where you get tired of thinking. Don't force it, get a bigger hammer. Every clarification breeds new questions. Every solution breeds new problems. If your project doesn't work, look for the part that you didn't think was important. Arthur Bloch

BAUDELAIRE

A sweetheart is a bottle of wine, a wife is a wine bottle. Always be a poet, even in prose. An artist is an artist only because of his exquisite sense of beauty, a sense which shows him intoxicating pleasures, but which at the same time implies and contains an equally exquisite sense of all deformities and all disproportion.

As a small child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life. Beauty is the sole ambition, the exclusive goal of Taste.

Spleen I have more memories than if I'd lived a thousand years. A heavy chest of drawers cluttered with balance-sheets, Processes, love-letters, verses, ballads, And heavy locks of hair enveloped in receipts, Hides fewer secrets than my gloomy brain. It is a pyramid, a vast burial vault Which contains more corpses than potter's field. I am a cemetery abhorred by the moon, In which long worms crawl like remorse And constantly harass my dearest dead. I am an old boudoir full of withered roses, Where lies a whole litter of old-fashioned dresses, Where the plaintive pastels and the pale Bouchers, Alone, breathe in the fragrance from an opened phial. Nothing is so long as those limping days, When under the heavy flakes of snowy years Ennui, the fruit of dismal apathy, Becomes as large as immortality. Henceforth you are no more, O living matter! Than a block of granite surrounded by vague terrors, Dozing in the depths of a hazy Sahara An old sphinx ignored by a heedless world, Omitted from the map, whose savage nature Sings only in the rays of a setting sun. Charles Baudelaire

CHAPLIN

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot. A day without laughter is a day wasted. Nothing is permanent in this wicked world - not even our troubles. Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself. I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician. I went into the business for the money, and the art grew out of it. If people are disillusioned by that remark, I can't help it. It's the truth. In the end, everything is a gag. What do you want a meaning for? Life is a desire, not a meaning. Charlie Chaplin CHE It is an illusion to think that the matter cannot be resolved through words. I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves. If you tremble indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine. To accomplish much you must first lose everything. I would rather die standing up, then live life on my knees. Silence is argument carried out by other means. Let the world change you and you can change the world.

Che Guevara

CHANEL The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud. Success is often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable. Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door. The best color in the whole world, is the one that looks good, on you! If a man talks bad about all women, it usually means he was burned by one woman Fashion fades, only style remains the same. I invented my life by taking for granted that everything I did not like would have an opposite, which I would like. There is time for work, and time for love. That leaves no other time Elegance is refusal. I am no longer what it was: should I be what I became. Coco Chanel

CONFUCIUS

And remember, no matter where you go, there you are. You cannot open a book without learning something.

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest. Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire. Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. I hear, I know. I see, I remember. I do, I understand. Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. If we don't know life, how can we know death? Never contract friendship with a man that is not better than thyself. Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change. To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it. Wherever you go, go with all your heart. Confucius LISPECTOR Reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkable thought. . . life precedes love, bodily matter precedes the body, and one day in its turn language shall have preceded possession of silence. Do not mourn the dead. They know what they are doing. Clarice Lispector LINCOLN

Whatever you are, be a good one And in the end it is not the years in your life that count, its the life in your years. Abraham Lincoln DEBUSSY Music is the silence between the notes. First of all, ladies and gentlemen, you must forget that you are singers. A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn. Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light. Extreme complication is contrary to art. People come to music to seek oblivion: is that not also a form of deception? Art is the most beautiful of all lies. Claude Debussy PARKER Brevity is the soul of lingerie. I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true. If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to. Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves. That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. Dorothy Parker

DYLAN THOMAS
DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rage at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

'Somebody's boring me,' he said, 'I think it's me.' Dylan Thomas

CUMMINGS

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question. Be of love a little more careful than of anything. I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart. I like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more. The earth laughs in flowers. It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are. Nothing recedes like progress. Kisses are a better fate than wisdom. To destroy is always the first step in any creation. e. e. cummings JOYCE

A man's errors are his portals of discovery. A nation is the same people living in the same place. Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America. He found in the world without as actual what was in his world within as possible. I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.

I fear those big words which make us so unhappy.

I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality. Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize. James Joyce

JONG It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone. Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't. Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more. Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads. Fame means millions of people have the wrong idea of who you are. Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed. He who can take advice is sometimes superior to him who can give it. I have accepted fear as a part of life - specifically the fear of change... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back. Jealousy is all the fun you think they had. Erica Jong

ERASMUS

A good portion of speaking will consist in knowing how to lie. Don't give your advice before you are called upon. Fortune favors the audacious. Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself. Great eagerness in the pursuit of wealth, pleasure, or honor, cannot exist without sin. He who allows oppression shares the crime. Human affairs are so obscure and various that nothing can be clearly known. Humility is truth. If you keep thinking about what you want to do or what you hope will happen, you don't do it, and it won't happen. In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Desiderius Erasmus

EPICURUS Epicurus to Menoeceus, greetings: Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search of it when he has grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come, or that it is past and gone, is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more. Therefore, both old and

young alike ought to seek wisdom, the former in order that, as age comes over him, he may be young in good things because of the grace of what has been, and the latter in order that, while he is young, he may at the same time be old, because he has no fear of the things which are to come. So we must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed towards attaining it. Those things which without ceasing I have declared unto you, do them, and exercise yourself in them, holding them to be the elements of right life. First believe that God is a living being immortal and blessed, according to the notion of a god indicated by the common sense of mankind; and so believing, you shall not affirm of him anything that is foreign to his immortality or that is repugnant to his blessedness. Believe about him whatever may uphold both his blessedness and his immortality. For there are gods, and the knowledge of them is manifest; but they are not such as the multitude believe, seeing that men do not steadfastly maintain the notions they form respecting them. Not the man who denies the gods worshipped by the multitude, but he who affirms of the gods what the multitude believes about them is truly impious. For the utterances of the multitude about the gods are not true preconceptions but false assumptions; hence it is that the greatest evils happen to the wicked and the greatest blessings happen to the good from the hand of the gods, seeing that they are always favorable to their own good qualities and take pleasure in men like themselves, but reject as alien whatever is not of their kind. Accustom yourself to believing that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply the capacity for sensation, and death is the privation of all sentience; therefore a correct understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life a limitless time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. For life has no terrors for him who has thoroughly understood that there are no terrors for him in ceasing to live. Foolish, therefore, is the man who says that he fears death, not because it will pain when it comes, but because it pains in the prospect. Whatever causes no annoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless pain in the expectation. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer.

But in the world, at one time men shun death as the greatest of all evils, and at another time choose it as a respite from the evils in life. The wise man does not deprecate life nor does he fear the cessation of life. The thought of life is no offense to him, nor is the cessation of life regarded as an evil. And even as men choose of food not merely and simply the larger portion, but the more pleasant, so the wise seek to enjoy the time which is most pleasant and not merely that which is longest. And he who admonishes the young to live well and the old to make a good end speaks foolishly, not merely because of the desirability of life, but because the same exercise at once teaches to live well and to die well. Much worse is he who says that it were good not to be born, but when once one is born to pass quickly through the gates of Hades. For if he truly believes this, why does he not depart from life? It would be easy for him to do so once he were firmly convinced. If he speaks only in jest, his words are foolishness as those who hear him do not believe. We must remember that the future is neither wholly ours nor wholly not ours, so that neither must we count upon it as quite certain to come nor despair of it as quite certain not to come. We must also reflect that of desires some are natural, others are groundless; and that of the natural some are necessary as well as natural, and some natural only. And of the necessary desires some are necessary if we are to be happy, some if the body is to be rid of uneasiness, some if we are even to live. He who has a clear and certain understanding of these things will direct every preference and aversion toward securing health of body and tranquillity of mind, seeing that this is the sum and end of a blessed life. For the end of all our actions is to be free from pain and fear, and, when once we have attained all this, the tempest of the soul is laid; seeing that the living creature has no need to go in search of something that is lacking, nor to look for anything else by which the good of the soul and of the body will be fulfilled. When we are pained because of the absence of pleasure, then, and then only, do we feel the need of pleasure. Wherefore we call pleasure the alpha and omega of a blessed life. Pleasure is our first and kindred good. It is the starting-point of every choice and of every aversion, and to it we come back, inasmuch as we make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good thing.

And since pleasure is our first and native good, for that reason we do not choose every pleasure whatsoever, but will often pass over many pleasures when a greater annoyance ensues from them. And often we consider pains superior to pleasures when submission to the pains for a long time brings us as a consequence a greater pleasure. While therefore all pleasure because it is naturally akin to us is good, not all pleasure is should be chosen, just as all pain is an evil and yet not all pain is to be shunned. It is, however, by measuring one against another, and by looking at the conveniences and inconveniences, that all these matters must be judged. Sometimes we treat the good as an evil, and the evil, on the contrary, as a good. Again, we regard independence of outward things as a great good, not so as in all cases to use little, but so as to be contented with little if we have not much, being honestly persuaded that they have the sweetest enjoyment of luxury who stand least in need of it, and that whatever is natural is easily procured and only the vain and worthless hard to win. Plain fare gives as much pleasure as a costly diet, when once the pain of want has been removed, while bread and water confer the highest possible pleasure when they are brought to hungry lips. To habituate one's self, therefore, to simple and inexpensive diet supplies all that is needful for health, and enables a man to meet the necessary requirements of life without shrinking, and it places us in a better condition when we approach at intervals a costly fare and renders us fearless of fortune. When we say, then, that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not mean the pleasures of the prodigal or the pleasures of sensuality, as we are understood to do by some through ignorance, prejudice, or willful misrepresentation. By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul. It is not an unbroken succession of drinkingbouts and of revelry, not sexual lust, not the enjoyment of the fish and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life; it is sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which the greatest tumults take possession of the soul. Of all this the beginning and the greatest good is wisdom. Therefore wisdom is a more precious thing even than philosophy ; from it spring all the other virtues, for it teaches that we cannot live pleasantly without living wisely, honorably, and justly; nor live wisely,

honorably, and justly without living pleasantly. For the virtues have grown into one with a pleasant life, and a pleasant life is inseparable from them. Who, then, is superior in your judgment to such a man? He holds a holy belief concerning the gods, and is altogether free from the fear of death. He has diligently considered the end fixed by nature, and understands how easily the limit of good things can be reached and attained, and how either the duration or the intensity of evils is but slight. Fate, which some introduce as sovereign over all things, he scorns, affirming rather that some things happen of necessity, others by chance, others through our own agency. For he sees that necessity destroys responsibility and that chance is inconstant; whereas our own actions are autonomous, and it is to them that praise and blame naturally attach. It were better, indeed, to accept the legends of the gods than to bow beneath that yoke of destiny which the natural philosophers have imposed. The one holds out some faint hope that we may escape if we honor the gods, while the necessity of the naturalists is deaf to all entreaties. Nor does he hold chance to be a god, as the world in general does, for in the acts of a god there is no disorder; nor to be a cause, though an uncertain one, for he believes that no good or evil is dispensed by chance to men so as to make life blessed, though it supplies the starting-point of great good and great evil. He believes that the misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool. It is better, in short, that what is well judged in action should not owe its successful issue to the aid of chance. Exercise yourself in these and related precepts day and night, both by yourself and with one who is like-minded; then never, either in waking or in dream, will you be disturbed, but will live as a god among men. For man loses all semblance of mortality by living in the midst of immortal blessings. Epicurus

HEMINGWAY

About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

All good books have one thing in common - they are truer than if they had really happened. All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time. All things truly wicked start from innocence. Courage is grace under pressure. Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. I know now that there is no one thing that is true - it is all true. I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.

I never had to choose a subject - my subject rather chose me. In modern war... you will die like a dog for no good reason. Never confuse movement with action. Ernest Hemingway

SABATO It is curious, but to live is to build future memories Ernesto Sabato

POUND

A great age of literature is perhaps always a great age of translations.

A man of genius has a right to any mode of expression. If a nation's literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays. Wars are made to make debt. A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him. All great art is born of the metropolis. No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents. Allow me to say that I would long since have committed suicide had desisting made me a professor of Latin. No verse is libre for the man who wants to do a good job. Either move or be moved. I guess the definition of a lunatic is a man surrounded by them. With Usura Canto LXV With usura hath no man a house of good stone each block cut smooth and well fitting that delight might cover their face, with usura hath no man a painted paradise on his church wall harpes et luthes or where virgin receiveth message and halo projects from incision, with usura

seeth no man Gonzaga his heirs and his concubines no picture is made to endure nor to live with but it is made to sell and sell quickly with usura, sin against nature, is thy bread ever more of stale rags is thy bread dry as paper, with no mountain wheat, no strong flour with usura the line grows thick with usura is no clear demarcation and no man can find site for his dwelling Stone cutter is kept from his stone weaver is kept from his loom WITH USURA wool comes not to market sheep bringeth no gain with usura Usura is a murrain, usura blunteth the needle in the the maid's hand and stoppeth the spinner's cunning. Pietro Lombardo came not by usura Duccio came not by usura nor Pier della Francesca; Zuan Bellin' not by usura nor was La Callunia painted. Came not by usura Angelico; came not Ambrogio Praedis, No church of cut stone signed: Adamo me fecit. Not by usura St. Trophime Not by usura St. Hilaire, Usura rusteth the chisel It rusteth the craft and the craftsman It gnaweth the thread in the loom None learneth to weave gold in her pattern; Azure hath a canker by usura; cramoisi is unbroidered Emerald findeth no Memling

Usura slayeth the child in the womb It stayeth the young man's courting It hath brought palsey to bed, lyeth between the young bride and her bridegroom CONTRA NATURAM They have brought whores for Eleusis Corpses are set to banquet at behest of usura. Ezra Pound IONESCO I've always been suspicious of collective truths. Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together. Living is abnormal.

Shakespeare was the great one before us. His place was between God and despair. It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question. We have not the time to take our time. You can only predict things after they have happened. Eugene Ionesco

VOLTAIRE Illusion is the first of all pleasures

Let us read and let us dance - two amusements that will never do any harm to the world. A witty saying proves nothing. As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities. Better is the enemy of good. Common sense is not so common Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do. God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers. He who has not the spirit of this age, has all the misery of it. Prejudices are what fools use for reason. One great use of words is to hide our thoughts. If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated. I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. Voltaire SHAW All great truths begin as blasphemies. In heaven an angel is nobody in particular. An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable. Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.

I am a Christian. That obliges me to be a Communist. I'm an atheist and I thank God for it. It is most unwise for people in love to marry. George Bernard Shaw

ORWELL

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me. A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion. Big Brother is watching you. Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing. In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. George Orwell

ELIOT Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. Might, could, would - they are contemptible auxiliaries.

There are many victories worse than a defeat. It's never too late to be what you might have been. George Eliot STEIN A real failure does not need an excuse. It is an end in itself. Considering how dangerous everything is, nothing is really very frightening. Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense. I do want to get rich but I never want to do what there is to do to get rich. If you can do it then why do it? Nature is commonplace. Imitation is more interesting. Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose. Stein: What is the answer? Alice B. Toklas [silent] Stein: In that case, what is the question? Gertrude Stein LEOPARDI People are ridiculous only when they try or seem to be that which they are not. Giacomo Leopardi

SEXTON

It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was. Live or die, but don't poison everything. Need is not quite belief. Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard.

Courage by Anne Sexton It is in the small things we see it. The child's first step, as awesome as an earthquake. The first time you rode a bike, wallowing up the sidewalk. The first spanking when your heart went on a journey all alone. When they called you crybaby or poor or fatty or crazy and made you into an alien, you drank their acid and concealed it.

Later,

if you faced the death of bombs and bullets you did not do it with a banner, you did it with only a hat to comver your heart. You did not fondle the weakness inside you though it was there. Your courage was a small coal that you kept swallowing. If your buddy saved you and died himself in so doing, then his courage was not courage, it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.

Later, if you have endured a great despair, then you did it alone, getting a transfusion from the fire, picking the scabs off your heart, then wringing it out like a sock. Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,

you gave it a back rub and then you covered it with a blanket and after it had slept a while it woke to the wings of the roses and was transformed.

Later, when you face old age and its natural conclusion your courage will still be shown in the little ways, each spring will be a sword you'll sharpen, those you love will live in a fever of love, and you'll bargain with the calendar and at the last moment when death opens the back door you'll put on your carpet slippers and stride out. Anne Sexton

GROUCHO

A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere.

Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot. Before I speak, I have something important to say. Behind every successful man is a woman, behind her is his wife. Either he's dead or my watch has stopped. From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it. Getting older is no problem. You just have to live long enough. Humor is reason gone mad. I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. I intend to live forever, or die trying. I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a good book. I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception. I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member. I remember the first time I had sex - I kept the receipt. I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury. I wish to be cremated. One tenth of my ashes shall be given to my agent, as written in our contract. I worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty. I'm leaving because the weather is too good. I hate London when it's not raining.

Man does not control his own fate. The women in his life do that for him. Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution? Next time I see you, remind me not to talk to you. No man goes before his time - unless the boss leaves early. Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. Room service? Send up a larger room. She got her looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon. The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made. Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms. Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? Why should I care about posterity? What's posterity ever done for me? Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others. Groucho Marx

MENCKEN For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.

All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it. Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time. Adultery is the application of democracy to love. Time stays, we go. H. L. Mencken

BERGMAN

A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous. Be yourself. The world worships the original. Happiness is good health and a bad memory. I do not know how to kiss, or I would kiss you. Where do the noses go? Ingrid Bergman

BERGMAN I hope I never get so old I get religious. Ingmar Bergman

MARX

Art is always and everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal movement of its time.

Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form. I am not a Marxist. Karl Marx

TZU A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving. He who does not trust enough, Will not be trusted. Man's enemies are not demons, but human beings like himself. Nature is not human hearted. Respond intelligently even to unintelligent treatment. Lao Tzu PIRANDELLO The history of mankind is the history of ideas. A fact is like a sack - it won't stand up if it's empty. To make it stand up, first you have to put in it all the reasons and feelings that caused it in the first place. Luigi Pirandello

BUNUEL Age is something that doesn't matter, unless you are a cheese.

Fortunately, somewhere between chance and mystery lies imagination, the only thing that protects our freedom, despite the fact that people keep trying to reduce it or kill it off altogether. God and Country are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed. I can only wait for the final amnesia, the one that can erase an entire life. In the name of Hippocrates, doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival. Thank God I'm an atheist. Luis Bunuel

GANDHI Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes. A nation's culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people.

A principle is the expression of perfection, and as imperfect beings like us cannot practise perfection, we devise every moment limits of its compromise in practice. Faith... must be enforced by reason... when faith becomes blind it dies. Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress. Action expresses priorities. Mohandas Gandhi

MOHAMMED

Kindness is a mark of faith, and whoever is not kind has no faith. The best richness is the richness of the soul. Silk was invented so that women could go naked in clothes. Prophet Mohammed

PROUST Let us leave pretty women to men devoid of imagination. Lies are essential to humanity. They are perhaps as important as the pursuit of pleasure and moreover are dictated by that pursuit. Like many intellectuals, he was incapable of saying a simple thing in a simple way. Love is space and time measured by the heart. Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees.

The bonds that unite another person to our self exist only in our mind. The only paradise is paradise lost. Marcel Proust

SADE Lust's passion will be served; it demands, it militates, it tyrannizes. All, all is theft, all is unceasing and rigorous competition in nature; the desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost - the most

legitimate - passion nature has bred into us and, without doubt, the most agreeable one. Destruction, hence, like creation, is one of Nature's mandates. Happiness is ideal, it is the work of the imagination. Marquis de Sade

GALEANO The Church says: the body is a sin. Science says: the body is a machine. Advertising says: The body is a business. The Body says: I am a fiesta. Utopia lies at the horizon. When I draw nearer by two steps, it retreats two steps. If I proceed ten steps forward, it swiftly slips ten steps ahead. No matter how far I go, I can never reach it. What, then, is the purpose of utopia? It is to cause us to advance. I can't sleep. There is a woman stuck between my eyelids. I would tell her to get out if I could. But there is a woman stuck in my throat I am not particularly interested in saving time; I prefer to enjoy it. Recordar: To remember; from the Latin records, to pass back through the heart Eduardo Hughes Galeano

CERVANTES A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience.

Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn. Every man is as heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse. Forewarned, forearmed; to be prepared is half the victory. Miguel de Cervantes

DYLAN A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom. A mistake is to commit a misunderstanding. A song is anything that can walk by itself. All I can do is be me, whoever that is. All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die. Basically you have to suppress your own ambitions in order to be who you need to be. Chaos is a friend of mine. Democracy don't rule the world, You'd better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that's better left unsaid. I am against nature. I don't dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can't touch with decay. I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be. I don't think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change.

I say there're no depressed words just depressed minds. I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours. I've never written a political song. Songs can't save the world. I've gone through all that. Just because you like my stuff doesn't mean I owe you anything. No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky. Well, the future for me is already a thing of the past.

The Times They Are A-Changin' Come gather 'round people Wherever you roam And admit that the waters Around you have grown And accept it that soon You'll be drenched to the bone. If your time to you Is worth savin' Then you better start swimmin' Or you'll sink like a stone For the times they are a-changin'. Come writers and critics Who prophesize with your pen And keep your eyes wide The chance won't come again And don't speak too soon For the wheel's still in spin And there's no tellin' who That it's namin'. For the loser now Will be later to win For the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen Please heed the call Don't stand in the doorway Don't block up the hall For he that gets hurt Will be he who has stalled There's a battle outside And it is ragin'. It'll soon shake your windows And rattle your walls For the times they are a-changin'. Come mothers and fathers Throughout the land And don't criticize What you can't understand Your sons and your daughters Are beyond your command Your old road is Rapidly agin(g)'. Please get out of the new one If you can't lend your hand For the times they are a-changin'. The line it is drawn The curse it is cast The slow one now Will later be fast As the present now Will later be past The order is Rapidly fadin'. And the first one now Will later be last For the times they are a-changin'. Bob Dylan

LENNON A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality. As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot. Everybody loves you when you're six foot in the ground. God is a concept by which we measure our pain. I don't believe in killing whatever the reason! If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal. Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans. All you need is love. John Lennon McCARTENY Love is all you need.

Maybe I'm Amazed Baby, I'm amazed at the way you love me all the time And maybe I'm afraid of the way I love you Baby, I'm amazed at the way you pulled me out of time And hung me on a line Maybe I'm amazed at the way I really need you Baby I'm a man and maybe I'm a lonely man Who's in the middle of something That he doesn't really understand Baby I'm a man and maybe you're the only woman Who could ever help me

Baby won't you help me to understand Baby I'm a man and maybe I'm a lonely man Who's in the middle of something That he doesn't really understand Baby I'm a man and maybe you're the only woman Who could ever help me Baby won't you help me to understand Maybe I'm amazed at the way you're with me all the time Maybe I'm afraid of the way I leave you Maybe I'm amazed at the way you help me sing my song You right me when I'm wrong Maybe I'm amazed at the way I really need you Paul McCartney MOLIERE Grammar, which knows how to control even kings. Don't appear so scholarly, pray. Humanize your talk, and speak to be understood. Ah! how annoying that the law doesn't allow a woman to change husbands just as one does shirts. A wise man is superior to any insults which can be put upon him, and the best reply to unseemly behavior is patience and moderation. I have the fault of being a little more sincere than is proper. I prefer a pleasant vice to an annoying virtue. It is the public scandal that offends; to sin in secret is no sin at all. Reason is not what decides love. Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.

We die only once, and for such a long time. Moliere

GINSBERG Poets are Damned... but See with the Eyes of Angels. The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction. America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel. I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked. My own experience is that a certain kind of genius among students is best brought out in bed. Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture. Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.

Excerpt from Wichita Vortex Sutra (1966) I'm an old man now, and a lonesome man in Kansas but not afraid to speak my lonesomeness in a car, because not only my lonesomeness it's Ours, all over America, O tender fellows-& spoken lonesomeness is Prophecy in the moon 100 years ago or in the middle of Kansas now. It's not the vast plains mute our mouths

that fill at midnite with ecstatic language when our trembling bodies hold each other breast to breast on a matress-Not the empty sky that hides the feeling from our faces nor our skirts and trousers that conceal the bodylove emanating in a glow of beloved skin, white smooth abdomen down to the hair between our legs, It's not a God that bore us that forbid our Being, like a sunny rose all red with naked joy between our eyes & bellies, yes All we do is for this frightened thing we call Love, want and lack-fear that we aren't the one whose body could be beloved of all the brides of Kansas City, kissed all over by every boy of Wichita-O but how many in their solitude weep aloud like me-On the bridge over the Republican River almost in tears to know how to speak the right language-on the frosty broad road uphill between highway embankments I search for the language that is also yours-almost all our language has been taxed by war. Radio antennae high tension wires ranging from Junction City across the plains-highway cloverleaf sunk in a vast meadow lanes curving past Abilene to Denver filled with old heroes of love-to Wichita where McClure's mind burst into animal beauty drunk, getting laid in a car in a neon misted street 15 years ago-to Independence where the old man's still alive who loosed the bomb that's slaved all human consciousness

and made the body universe a place of fear-Now, speeding along the empty plain, no giant demon machine visible on the horizon but tiny human trees and wooden houses at the sky's edge I claim my birthright! reborn forever as long as Man in Kansas or other universe--Joy reborn after the vast sadness of War Gods! A lone man talking to myself, no house in the brown vastness to hear, imaging the throng of Selves that make this nation one body of Prophecy languaged by Declaration as Happiness! I call all Powers of imagination to my side in this auto to make Prophecy, all Lords of human kingdoms to come Shambu Bharti Baba naked covered with ash Khaki Baba fat-bellied mad with the dogs Dehorahava Baba who moans Oh how wounded, How wounded Sitaram Onkar Das Thakur who commands give up your desire Satyananda who raises two thumbs in tranquility Kali Pada Guha Roy whose yoga drops before the void Shivananda who touches the breast and says OM Srimata Krishnaji of Brindaban who says take for your guru William Blake the invisible father of English visions Sri Ramakrishna master of ecstasy eyes half closed who only cries for his mother Chaitanya arms upraised singing & dancing his own praise merciful Chango judging our bodies Durga-Ma covered with blood destroyer of battlefield illusions million-faced Tathagata gone past suffering Preserver Harekrishna returning in the age of pain Sacred Heart my Christ acceptable Allah the Compassionate One Jahweh Righteous One all Knowledge-Princes of Earth-man, all

ancient Seraphim of heavenly Desire, Devas, yogis & holymen I chant to-Come to my lone presence into this Vortex named Kansas, I lift my voice aloud, make Mantra of American language now, I here declare the end of the War! Ancient days' Illusion! and pronounce words beginning my own millennium. Let the States tremble, let the Nation weep, let Congress legislate it own delight let the President execute his own desire-this Act done by my own voice, nameless Mystery-published to my own senses, blissfully received by my own form approved with pleasure by my sensations manifestation of my very thought accomplished in my own imagination all realms within my consciousness fulfilled 60 miles from Wichita near El Dorado, The Golden One, in chill earthly mist houseless brown farmland plains rolling heavenward in every direction one midwinter afternoon Sunday called the day of the Lord-Pure Spring Water gathered in one tower where Florence is set on a hill, stop for tea & gas

Allen Ginsberg

DOSTOEVSKY

Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it. Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad. It is not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer? Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid. The soul is healed by being with children. The formula 'Two and two make five' is not without its attractions. The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness. Fyodor Dostoevsky PLATH Is there no way out of the mind? And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

But life is long. And it is the long run that balances the short flare of interest and passion. Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call. How frail the human heart must be - a mirrored pool of thought.

I am too pure for you or anyone. I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my eyes and all is born again. I talk to God but the sky is empty. I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am. Kiss me and you will see how important I am. The blood jet is poetry and there is no stopping it. There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them. Widow. The word consumes itself. Sylvia Plath

WILDE A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal. A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally. A poet can survive everything but a misprint. A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it. Alas, I am dying beyond my means. All art is quite useless. All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there. Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing. Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known. Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same. Biography lends to death a new terror. Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them. Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance. Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. Everything popular is wrong. Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes. Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends. I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself. I am not young enough to know everything.

I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying. I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly. I can resist everything except temptation.

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have nothing to declare except my genius. I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best. I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world. I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works. I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being. I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything. I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability. I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all. If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized. If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures. In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane. In married life three is company and two none. It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information. It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious. It is always the unreadable that occurs. It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating. It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned. It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection. Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one. Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about. Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not. Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are. Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit. Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities. The truth is rarely pure and never simple. There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating - people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. There is no sin except stupidity. To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Oscar Wilde

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