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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
The human condition3 quotes
The bonds between ourselves and another person exist only in our minds. Memory as it grows fainter loosens them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we want to be duped and which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we dupe other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature who cannot escape from himself, who knows other people only in himself, and when he asserts the contrary, he is lying. — Marcel Proust · 1922You're on earth, there's no cure for that! — Samuel Beckett · 1957They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more. — Samuel Beckett · 1953Atheism2 quotes
It is a curious thing, do you know, Cranly said dispassionately, how your mind is supersaturated with the religion in which you say you disbelieve. — James Joyce · 1915Let us pray to God... The bastard! He doesn't exist! — Samuel Beckett · 1957Authenticity2 quotes
I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use—silence, exile and cunning. — James Joyce · 1915When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets. — James Joyce · 1915Happiness2 quotes
He was unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart of life. — James Joyce · 1915Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind. — Marcel Proust · 1922Life2 quotes
They lived und laughed ant loved end left. — James Joyce · 1939They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more. — Samuel Beckett · 1953Memory2 quotes
His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that in some dim past, whether in life or reverie, he had heard their tale before. — James Joyce · 1915Once I had recognized the taste of the crumb of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime flowers which my aunt used to give me... Immediately the old gray house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like the scenery of a theater. — Marcel Proust · 1913Self-expression2 quotes
I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use—silence, exile and cunning. — James Joyce · 1915When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets. — James Joyce · 1915Society and the individual2 quotes
I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use—silence, exile and cunning. — James Joyce · 1915When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets. — James Joyce · 1915Suffering2 quotes
We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full. — Marcel Proust · 1922Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey. — Marcel Proust · 1922Acquiring wisdom1 quote
We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us. — Marcel Proust · 1919Alienation1 quote
When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. — Franz Kafka · 1915Alienation from oneself1 quote
When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. — Franz Kafka · 1915Art1 quote
Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world only, our own, we see that world multiply itself and we have at our disposal as many worlds as there are original artists, worlds more different one from the other than those which revolve in infinite space, worlds which, centuries after the extinction of the fire from which their light first emanated, whether it is called Rembrandt or Vermeer, send us still each one its special radiance. — Marcel Proust · 1922Beautiful women1 quote
Let us leave pretty women to men with no imagination. — Marcel Proust · 1922Being carefree1 quote
He was unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart of life. — James Joyce · 1915Being in love1 quote
His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that in some dim past, whether in life or reverie, he had heard their tale before. — James Joyce · 1915Being true to oneself1 quote
I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use—silence, exile and cunning. — James Joyce · 1915Books1 quote
Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader's recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book's truth. — Marcel Proust · 1922Change1 quote
When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. — Franz Kafka · 1915Connecting with others1 quote
The bonds between ourselves and another person exist only in our minds. Memory as it grows fainter loosens them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we want to be duped and which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we dupe other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature who cannot escape from himself, who knows other people only in himself, and when he asserts the contrary, he is lying. — Marcel Proust · 1922Contentment1 quote
He was unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart of life. — James Joyce · 1915Creativity1 quote
Everything we think of as great has come to us from neurotics. It is they and they alone who found religions and create great works of art. The world will never realise how much it owes to them and what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts on it. — Marcel Proust · 1921Delusion1 quote
Love... Is a striking example of how little reality means to us. — Marcel Proust · 1922Desire1 quote
I desire to press in my arms the loveliness which has not yet come into the world. — James Joyce · 1915Different perspectives1 quote
The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is. — Marcel Proust · 1922Discovery1 quote
The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is. — Marcel Proust · 1922Empathy1 quote
The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is. — Marcel Proust · 1922Ephemeral nature of life1 quote
They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more. — Samuel Beckett · 1953Existence of God1 quote
Let us pray to God... The bastard! He doesn't exist! — Samuel Beckett · 1957Existential solitude1 quote
The bonds between ourselves and another person exist only in our minds. Memory as it grows fainter loosens them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we want to be duped and which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we dupe other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature who cannot escape from himself, who knows other people only in himself, and when he asserts the contrary, he is lying. — Marcel Proust · 1922