Quotes · Skopia

17 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

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Personal journal

Pessimism (or rather what is called such) is, in brief, playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only view of life in which you can never be disappointed.

1902

★ 6.0

The end must justify the means.

Hans Carvel · 1700

★ 5.3

Personal journal

Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.

1871

★ 5.2

Novel · Spy novel · Spy

We have to live without sympathy, don't we? That's impossible of course. We act it to one another, this hardness; but we aren't like that really. I mean... One can't be out in the cold all the time; one has to come in from the cold... Do you see what I mean?

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold · 1963

★ 5.2

Novel · Spy novel · Spy

We do disagreeable things so that ordinary people here and elsewhere can sleep safely in their beds at night.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold · 1963

★ 4.5

Uniform pleasantness is rather a defect than a faculty. It shows that a man hasn't sense enough to know whom to despise.

A Pair of Blue Eyes · 1872

★ 4.4

Considering his position he became wonderfully free from the chronic melancholy which is taking hold of the civilized races with the decline of belief in a beneficent Power.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles · 1891

★ 4.4

It is hard for a woman to define her feelings in a language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.

Far From the Madding Crowd · 1874

★ 3.6

It was at present a place perfectly accordant with man's nature-neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly; neither commonplace, unmeaning, nor tame; but, like man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony. As with some persons who have long lived apart, solitude seemed to look out of its countenance. It had a lonely face, suggesting tragical possiblities.

The Return of the Native · 1878

★ 3.5

Yes, quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down You'd treat if met where any bar is, Or help to half-a-crown.

1902

★ 3.5

And as the smart ship grew In stature, grace, and hue, In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

1912

★ 3.5

A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all.

1876

★ 2.0

The fundamental error of their matrimonial union; that of having based a permanent contract on a temporary feeling.

Jude the Obscure · 1894

★ 2.0

War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading.

1904

★ 1.9

Almighty God hath not bestowed on mankind a remedy of so universal an extent and so efficacious in curing divers maladies as opiates.

Thomas Sydenham

1676

★ 1.9

A novel is an impression, not an argument.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles · 1891

★ 1.3

Autobiography and memoir

I was told that desire for learning in women was against the will of God.

1937

★ 1.1