I have learned that a man who makes trouble for others makes trouble for himself.
Nobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am - and what I need - is something I have to find out myself.
I have a lot of work to do today; I need to slaughter memory, Turn my living soul to stone Then teach myself to live again.
Our enemies are Medes and Persians, men who for centuries have lived soft and luxurious lives; we of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war.
You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.
High thoughts must have high language.
They won't listen. Do you know why? Because they have certain fixed notions about the past. Any change would be blasphemy in their eyes, even if it were the truth. They don't want the truth; they want their traditions.
I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.
You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize that, and you ll find strength.
Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.
Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.
We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.
They are much to be pitied who have not been given a taste for nature early in life.
I have always kept one end in view, namely… to conduct a well-regulated church music to the honor of God.
What I have achieved by industry and practice, anyone else with tolerable natural gift and ability can also achieve.
Good fame is like fire; when you have kindled you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again.
“It is always assumed by the empty-headed, who chatter about themselves for want of something better, that people who do not discuss their affairs openly must have something to hide.
We have in fact only two certainties in this world - that we are not everything and that we will die
I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself.
Man is defined as a human being and woman as a female. Whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male.
“I respect kindness in human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.
“It’s not that the Irish are cynical. It’s rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everybody.”
If you greatly desire something, have the guts to stake everything on obtaining it.
Don't keep forever on the public road, going only where others have gone. Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods. You'll be certain to find something you have never seen before.”
A child... never takes time off as a child; time off does not begin until the principles of order have been accepted.
The Nazi period could have happened only in Germany because the German education of obedience to any law and order was the main problem.
Humor is really one of the hardest things to define, very hard. And it's very ambiguous. You have it, or you don't. You can't attain it.
Europe is overpopulated, the world will soon be in the same condition, and if the self-reproduction of man is not rationalized... we' ll have war.
At least I have the modesty to admit that lack of modesty is one of my failings.
When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself.
It is impossible that a town will not play a part in your life, it does not even make much difference whether you have more good or bad things to say of it, it draws your mind to it, by a mental law of gravitation.
Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before, how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever.
We must leave our mark on life while we have it in our power.
To have compassion for those who suffer is a human quality which everyone should possess, especially those who have required comfort themselves in the past and have managed to find it in others. ”
“Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I'd rather boast about the ones I've read.”
“I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.”
We will never have repose. The present is perpetual.
The finest plans have always been spoiled by the littleness of them that should carry them out. Even emperors can't do it all by themselves.
“I’m not the only composer to have been impressed and influenced by Gypsies … and what is the point of a tradition if we can’t take things from it?
The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting.
We are like roses that have never bothered to bloom when we should have bloomed and it is as if the sun has become disgusted with waiting
We two have paddled in the stream, from morning sun till dine; But seas between us broad have roared since days of long ago.
Firmness in enduring and exertion is a character I always wish to possess. I have always despised the whining yelp of complaint and cowardly resolve.
Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has.
I have great hopes that we shall love each other all our lives as much as if we had never married at all.
In combating racism we do not make progress if we combat the people themselves. We have to combat the causes of racism.
Do not confuse the reality you live in with the ideas you have in your head.
I have lived long enough both in years and in accomplishments.
I began revolution with 82 men. If I had to do it again, I do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action.
Of course many people will have much to say. We should listen. But we won't be deceived by words such as Indispensable, Unique, and Great.
Never stand begging for that which you have the power to earn.
There are only two families in the world, my old grandmother used to say, the Haves and the Have-nots.
Destiny guides our fortunes more favorably than we could have expected.
There is no book so bad...that it does not have something good in it.
The killers fled with their axes like mirrors, the birds no longer have where to hang their songs.
Nature gives you the face you have at twenty. Life shapes the face you have at thirty. But at fifty you get the face you deserve.
Elegance is not the prerogative of those who have just escaped adolescence, but of those who have already taken possession of their future.
Alexander created cities everywhere he passed: I have left dreams everywhere I have trailed my life.
The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.
Cruel leaders are replaced only to have new leaders turn cruel.
There are a great many opinions in this world, and a good half of them are professed by people who have never been in trouble.
Oh, how miserable it is to have no one to share your sorrows and joys, and, when your heart is heavy, to have no soul to whom you can pour out your woes.
As long as I have health and strength, I will gladly work all my days.
The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
We have to abandon the idea that schooling is something restricted to youth. How can it be, in a world where half the things a man knows at 20 are no longer true at 40 - and half the things he knows at 40 hadn't been discovered when he was 20?
Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life.
We must have perserverence and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something.
Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.
In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.
I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.
Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal.
To remind a man of the good turns you have done him is very much like a reproach.
You cannot have a proud and chivalrous spirit if your conduct is mean and paltry; for whatever a man's actions are, such must be his spirit.
We have only one recourse in the face of death: make art before it happens.
Never close your lips to those whom you have already opened your heart.
Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.
You have to make it happen.
We have two ears and one tongue so that we should listen more and talk less.
I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn't know how to get along without it.
All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.
I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can’t help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year.
It's necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.
Often we pass beside happiness without seeing it, without looking at it, or even if we have seen and looked at it, without recognizing it.
As a general rule...people ask for advice only in order not to follow it; or if they do follow it, in order to have someone to blame for giving it.
If you want to keep your memories, you first have to live them.
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.
History is rich with adventurous men, long on charisma, with a highly developed instinct for their own interests, who have pursued personal power - bypassing parliaments and constitutions, distributing favours to their minions, and conflating their own desires with the interests of the community.
We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That’s why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It’s a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don’t want to die
It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.
It is never too late to be what you might have been.
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those we have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these things.
If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it offers you.
We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.
Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
Your eyes in which I travel, Have given to signs along the roads A meaning alien to the earth.
only he who fights the darkness within will the day after tomorrow have his own share in the sun.
A man can have everything having nothing and nothing having everything.
We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.
It takes more than just a good looking body. You should have the heart and soul to go with it.
We have two ears and one mouth so we can listen twice as much as we speak.
There is only one way to happiness, you have to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.
It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.
Old habits can be a burden, when we have become so alike.
Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely.
“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”
God did not, as the Bible says, make man in His image; on the contrary man, as I have shown in The Essence of Christianity, made God in his image.”
It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.
Forgive me if I don’t have the words. Maybe I can sing it and you’ll understand.
Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.
To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.
He that can have patience can have what he will.-“Honesty is the best policy.
The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.
“He that can have patience can have what he will.”
Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism.
The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is “What does a woman want?”
Words have a magical power. They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair; they can transfer knowledge from teacher to student; words enable the orator to sway his audience and dictate its decisions. Words are capable of arousing the strongest emotions and prompting all men’s actions.
If I am what I have and if I lose what I have who then am I?
Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.
You have freedom when you're easy in your harness.
“My path is full of petals–I have swept it for no others.
It is much more shameful to lose a good reputation than never to have acquired it.
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.”
We never really know what stupidity is until we have experimented on ourselves.
The self-esteem one acquires and a well-earned feeling of one's strength are the only consolation in this world. Income, after all, most brutes have that.
Would Hamlet have felt the delicious fascination of suicide if he hadn't had an audience, and lines to speak?
Worse than not realizing the dreams of your youth would be to have been young and never dreamed at all.
I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.
It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.
The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.
Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter's soul.
We have the marvelous gift of making everything insignificant.”
Before we can forgive one another, we have to understand one another.
The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man's right to his body, or woman's right to her soul.
Humans, the only self-regarding animals, blessed or cursed with this torturing higher faculty, have always wanted to know why.
A good man can be stupid and still be good. But a bad man must have brains.
All men are intellectuals, but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals.
People won't have time for you if you are always angry or complaining.
When one's expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything one does have.
I will not say that women have no character; rather, they have a new one every day.
Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.
As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.
I am what libraries and librarians have made me, with little assistance from a professor of Greek and poets.
Eyes and ears are poor witnesses to people if they have uncultured souls.
Potter is jealous of potter, and craftsman of craftsman; and the poor have a grudge against the poor, and the poet against the poet.
You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to
We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.
I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.
I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.
You are my drunkenness... I did not sober up, as if I can do that; I don't want to anyway. I have a headache, my knees are full of scars I am in mud all around I struggle to walk towards your hesitant light.”
The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words. Walking is the best medicine.
If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.
To flee vice is the beginning of virtue, and to have got rid of folly is the beginning of wisdom.
Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace.
To be perfectly happy it does not suffice to possess happiness, it is necessary to have deserved it.
Treat your parents as you would like your children to behave to you.
Consider sufficient what you have in the present, but don't stop to look for the best.
Money does not heal hearts that have been hurt by love. On the contrary, it offends them…
Song, how hard it is sing you when I have to sing in fear!
The urban man is an uprooted tree, he can put out leaves, flowers and grow fruit but what a nostalgia his leaf, flower, and fruit will always have for mother earth!
This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.
We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.
There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst.
“Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?”
There must be a law against forcing children to perform at an early age. Children should have a wonderful childhood. They should not be given too much responsibility.
Women are not pals enough with men, so we must make ourselves indispensable. After all, we have the greatest weapon in our hands by just being women.
For peace to reign on Earth, humans must evolve into new beings who have learned to see the whole first.”
Lunatics have no age. If we were crazy, you and I, we might be a great deal younger.”
Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all, is not to have one.
You have your brush, you have your colors, paint your paradise, and in you go.
When ships to sail the void between the stars have been built, there will step forth men to sail these ships.
My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.
My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream that one day little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls.
If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they have not communicated with each other.
We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.
Even when I am being idle, I have plenty of food for thought, both early and late - thoughts both about and not about art.
Even when I have to write a simple letter I'm scared stiff as if faced with looming seasickness.
Of all the gracious things upon this earth, It is fair words that have the greatest worth,
The working people cannot purchase with their wages the wealth which they have produced.
No, the man said, looking past him with his empty gaze, the realm of the dead isn't anything. But to those who have been there, nothing else is anything either.
Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.
A woman unsatisfied must have luxuries. But a woman who loves a man would sleep on a board.
We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen. - Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved.
“We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is.
Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.
When you're drowning, you don't say 'I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me,' you just scream.
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.
You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.
Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”
Parents wonder why the streams are bitter, when they themselves have poisoned the fountain.
Few men think, yet all will have opinions. Hence men’s opinions are superficial and confused
I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.
“You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
As I have not worried to be born, I do not worry to die.
Voithó tous anthrópous ópote écho tin efkairía. Óchi móno fílous, allá kai echthroús. 85 / 5.000 Αποτελέσματα μετάφρασης I help people whenever I have the chance. Not only friends but also enemies.
“A monkey is always a monkey," says the proverb, "even if he has birth-tokens of gold." Although you have a book in your hand and read all the time, you do not understand a single thing that you read, but you are like the donkey that listens to the lyre and wags his ears.
Politics have no relation to morals.
Culture is the sum of all the forms of art, of love, and of thought, which, in the coarse or centuries, have enabled man to be less enslaved.
“During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination.
The first thing is to be honest with yourself. You can never have an impact on society if you have not changed yourself... Great peacemakers are all people of integrity, of honesty, but humility.”
The attacks of which I have been the object have broken the spring of life in me... People don't realize what it feels like to be constantly insulted.
There is only one true thing: instantly paint what you see. When you've got it, you've got it. When you haven't, you begin again. All the rest is humbug.
It is not enough to know your craft - you have to have feeling. Science is all very well, but for us imagination is worth far more.
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.
Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.
There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits.
Greek philosophy seems to have met with something with which a good tragedy is not supposed to meet, namely, a dull ending.
“Go on, get out! Last words are for fools who haven't said enough!”(his last words)
Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.
I have fun with my clothes onstage; it's not a concert you're seeing, it's a fashion show.
If there is one thing that the women and men of the late 20th century who have an awareness and enjoyment of history can be sure of, it is that Islam was not sent from Heaven to foster egotism and mediocrity.
One can paint with two colors, and draw with one. Three, or four at most, have for centuries been enough men.
If we have been pleased with life, we should not be displeased with death, since it comes from the hand of the same master.
I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.
Young people get the foolish idea that what is new for them must be new for everybody else too. No matter how unconventional they get, they're just repeating what others before them have done.
Speech is our second possession, after the soul-and perhaps we have no other possession in this world.
I become quite melancholy and deeply grieved to see men behave to each other as they do. Everywhere I find nothing but base flattery, injustice , self-interest, deceit and roguery. I cannot bear it any longer; I'm furious; and my intention is to break with all mankind.”
Every day I discover more and more beautiful things. It’s enough to drive one mad. I have such a desire to do everything, my head is bursting with it.
I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should seem a fool, but be wise.
When a child is given a little leeway, he will at once shout, ’I want to do it!’ But in our schools, which have an environment adapted to children’s needs, they say, ‘Help me to do it alone.
I'm interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos, especially activity that appears to have no meaning. It seems to me to be the road toward freedom.
For as long as I can remember I have suffered from a deep feeling of anxiety which I have tried to express in my art. Read more at
The colors live a remarkable life of their own after they have been applied to the canvas.
Sickness, insanity and death were the angels that surrounded my cradle and they have followed me throughout my life.
A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.
All human (and non-human) beings have long-term interests in common.
Till ye have battled with great grief and fears/And borne the conflict of dream-shattering years/Wounded with fierce desire and worn with strife/Children, ye have not lived: for this is life.”
Those who have loved are those that have found God'
He who has no faith in himself can never have faith in God.
“Courage isn't having the strength to go on - it is going on when you don't have strength.”
I have met many young men, who have the skeletons of the old covered by the garb of youth. On the other hand, I have met many elderly people who are weighed down by age but beneath the cloud there lies the glorious sun of youth.
If I have done the public any service, it is due to my patient thought.
If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”
“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.
Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.
All those who try to unveil the mysteries always have tragic lives. At the end they are always punished.
Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.
We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.
When you say you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.
Every single pleasure I can imagine or have experienced is more delightful, more of a pleasure, if you take it in small sips, if you take your time. Reading is not an exception.
“If you have no more tears left to weep, then don’t weep. Laugh.
Facts have a tendency to obscure the truth.
We have it in our power to begin the world over again.
Was it really my destiny, was it my fortune, I haven't met another A sea within me as shallow as a lake, And like an ocean boundless and big.
Every time I hear a recording I've made, I hear all kinds of things I could improve or things I should have done. There's always so much more to be done in music. It's so vast.
“I made this [letter] very long, because I did not have the leisure to make it shorter.”
I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn't of much value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.
Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.
Serious-minded people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.
Famous men have the whole earth as their memorial.
Freedom is the sure possession of those who have the courage to defend it.
We never love anyone. What we love is the idea we have of someone. It's our own concept—our own selves—that we love.
We worship perfection because we can't have it; if we had it, we would reject it. Perfection is inhuman, because humanity is imperfect.”
Die with glory, if you really have to die!
I've always wanted to sing, just as I've always known that one day I would have my own niche in the annals of song. It was a feeling I had.
I think you have to pay for love with bitter tears.
Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.
Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.
Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time.
Perfection is terrible; it cannot have children.
I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad.
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 have a call.
Wise people speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.
The community which has neither poverty nor great riches will always have the noblest principles.
In comparing various authors with one another, I have discovered that some of the gravest and latest writers have transcribed, word for word, from former works, without making acknowledgment.
It is generally much more shameful to lose a good reputation than never to have acquired it.
I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.
Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.
Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn't have any beginning or any end. He didn't mean it as a compliment, but it was.
My paintings do not have a center, but depend on the same amount of interest throughout.
No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.
We have become makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets..
I have come one step away from everything. And here I stay, far from everything, one step away.
I know what I have given you... I do not know what you have received.
Flowers are without hope. Because hope is tomorrow and flowers have no tomorrow.
I have never known anyone worth a damn who wasn't irascible.
It is impossible to work at the same time upon frontispieces of books: a Virgin: at the picture for the congregation of St. Louis, at the designs for the gallery, and for the king's tapestry! I have only a feeble head, and am not aided by anyone!
Rhythm is something you either have or don't have, but when you have it, you have it all over.
The true paradises are the paradises that we have lost.
It is better to have dreamed a thousand dreams that never were than never to have dreamed at all.
There have been only rare moments in history where individual histories were able to run their course without wars or revolutions.
I have loved him too much not to hate”
A tragedy need not have blood and death; it's enough that it all be filled with that majestic sadness that is the pleasure of tragedy
I have everything, yet have nothing; and although I possess nothing, still of nothing am I in want.
There's no question of practising law here, it's almost a farce. I often have to suspend my sense of reality when I enter court.
I never think I have finished a nude until I think I could pinch it.
“I have arrived more definitely than any other painter during his lifetime; honours shower upon me from every side; artists pay me compliments on my work; there are many people to whom my position must seem enviable…. But I don’t seem to have a single real friend!”
Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. ...live in the question.
Idle youth, enslaved to everything; by being too sensitive I have wasted my life.
I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; garlands from window to window; golden chains from star to star, and I dance.
I have to believe much in God because I have lost my faith in man
We do not despise all those who have vices, but we do despise those that have no virtue.
People's personalities, like buildings, have various facades, some pleasant to view, some not.
We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others.
The degree to which I can create relationships, which facilitate the growth of others as separate persons, is a measure of the growth I have achieved in myself.
If a man is to shed the light of the sun upon other men, he must first of all have it within himself.
One makes mistakes; that is life. But it is never a mistake to have loved.
I have always said and felt that true enjoyment can not be described.
I am not made like any of those I have seen. I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different.”
Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give
In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.”
“Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.
When we live in a world that is very unjust, you have to be a dissident.
When you have increasing power of religious groups, oppression of women increases. Women are oppressed in all religions.
Reveal not every secret you have to a friend, for how can you tell but that friend may hereafter become an enemy. And bring not all mischief you are able to upon an enemy, for he may one day become your friend.
Have patience. All things are difficult before they become easy.
It is necessary ... for a man to go away by himself ... to sit on a rock ... and ask, 'Who am I, where have I been, and where am I going?”
There are some people who can receive a truth by no other way than to have their understanding shocked and insulted.
I have written some poetry that I don't understand myself.
The greatest cunning is to have none at all.
If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I'm still waiting, it's all been to seduce women basically.
I want to love you without clutching, appreciate you without judging, join you without invading, invite you without demanding, leave you without guilt, criticize you without blaming, and help you without insulting. If I can have the same from you, then we can truly meet and enrich each other.
The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite.
You believe happiness to be derived from the place in which once you have been happy, but in truth it is centered in ourselves.
One thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.
Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.
The only thing of importance, when we depart, will be the traces of love we have left behind
“Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale.”
have learned from those who know how to preserve the tradition of music. I play music the way it used to be played.
I continue to have pangs of conscience that I did so little.
When we are well, we all have good advice for those who are ill.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.
All the world ‘s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.
The music I have learned and want to offer is like worship to God. It is absolutely like a prayer.
As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
God is the hope, we all have inside us and keep us alive. God is the soul, or otherwise the energy we have inside us and help us to deal with everything in life. God is the birth, a new life from nothing, from no existence to existence.
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.
I have drunken deep of joy, And I will taste no other wine tonight.
Greed has driven the world crazy. And I think I'm lucky that I have a place over here that I can call home.
But I have a conscience and a religious faith, and I know that our liberties were not won without suffering, and may be lost again through our cowardice. I intend to do my duty to my country.
Through fasting. . .I have found a perfect health, a new state of existence, a feeling of purity and happiness, something unknown to humans.
No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn't die out, it's wiped out.
A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.
Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so you can gain easily what others have labored hard for.
Men of ill judgment ignore the good that lies within their hands, till they have lost it.
I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.
And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.
I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.
I haven't understood a single piece of music in my life, but I have felt it.
You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday
We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
I have reached a very mature age without resting upon anything positive, without having calmed my restless spirit either by religion or philosophy. Undoubtedly I should have gone mad but for music.
"I am a part of all that I have met."
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.
Do not be in a hurry to succeed. What would you have to live for afterwards? Better make the horizon your goal; it will always be ahead of you.
Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.
Men who are capable of real action first make their plans and then go forward without hesitation while their enemies have still not made up their minds.
It is frequently a misfortune to have very brilliant men in charge of affairs. They expect too much of ordinary men.
I have sailed many waters, Skirted islands of fire,
Joy can only be real if people look upon their life as a service and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.
Monet's work would have been even greater if he had not abandoned figure-painting.
Technique is noticed most markedly in the case of those who have not mastered it.
If we had had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything
Dreams come true. Without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.
Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.
Serious-minded people have few ideas. People with ideas are never serious.
“There are desires to return, to love, to not disappear, and there are desires to die, fought by two opposing waters that have never isthmused.”
If there were no thunder, men would have little fear of lightning.
If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it.
I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.
We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.
New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.
Days I have held, days I have lost, days that outgrow, like daughters, my harbouring arms.
“I have learned that to be with those I like is enough”
Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.
There have been only 268 of the past 3,421 years free of war.
In my youth I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty is a product of order.
I suppose I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.
Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it.
Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.
To enjoy freedom we have to control ourselves.
“Do you realize that we're meteorites; almost as soon as we're born, we have to disappear?”
The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.
I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.
There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.
I have spread my dreams under your feet. Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
The true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself; my first homelands have been books, and to a lesser degree schools.
“I have but one passion: to enlighten those who have been kept in the dark, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul.”
One must be convinced to convince, to have enthusiasm to stimulate the others.