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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Charles Dickens36 quotes
Please, sir, I want some more. — Charles Dickens · 1837It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. — Charles Dickens · 1859No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for any one else. — Charles Dickens · 1865Ask no questions, and you'll be told no lies. — Charles Dickens · 1860Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire, secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. — Charles Dickens · 1843In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice. — Charles Dickens · 1860All 36 quotes →Mark Twain26 quotes
Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden. — Mark Twain · 1876There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. — Mark Twain · 1884All kings is mostly rapscallions. — Mark Twain · 1884It’s lovely to live on a raft. — Mark Twain · 1884Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. — Mark Twain · 1894Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear-not absence of fear. — Mark Twain · 1894All 26 quotes →Jane Austen24 quotes
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. — Jane Austen · 1813You ought certainly to forgive them as a Christian, but never to admit them in your sight, or allow their names to be mentioned in your hearing. — Jane Austen · 1813To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love. — Jane Austen · 1813I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine. — Jane Austen · 1813The sooner every party breaks up, the better. — Jane Austen · 1816One man’s ways may be as good as another’s, but we all like our own best. — Jane Austen · 1817All 24 quotes →Hermann Hesse22 quotes
I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself. — Hermann Hesse · 1919One never reaches home... But wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time. — Hermann Hesse · 1919Love isn't there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure. — Hermann Hesse · 1904Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I had attained it. It was cold. Oh, cold enough! But it was also still, wonderfully still and vast like the cold stillness of space in which the stars revolve. — Hermann Hesse · 1927Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again. — Hermann Hesse · 1919Love must not entreat... Or demand. Love must have the strength to become certain within itself. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract. — Hermann Hesse · 1919All 22 quotes →George Orwell19 quotes
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU. — George Orwell · 1949All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. — George Orwell · 1945WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH — George Orwell · 1949If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever. — George Orwell · 1949If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself. — George Orwell · 1949The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which. — George Orwell · 1945All 19 quotes →Oscar Wilde19 quotes
The curves of your lips rewrite history. — Oscar Wilde · 1891Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed. — Oscar Wilde · 1890Genius lasts longer than Beauty. — Oscar Wilde · 1890It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution. — Oscar Wilde · 1890The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young. — Oscar Wilde · 1890A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. — Oscar Wilde · 1890All 19 quotes →George Eliot17 quotes
An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry. — George Eliot · 1866We cannot reform our forefathers. — George Eliot · 1859He was like a cock, who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow. — George Eliot · 1859Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts-not to hurt others. — George Eliot · 1872A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections. — George Eliot · 1876There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms. — George Eliot · 1876All 17 quotes →Douglas Adams16 quotes
You live and learn. At any rate, you live. — Douglas Adams · 1992The Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything...it's Forty-two. — Douglas Adams · 1978Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws. — Douglas Adams · 1992A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. — Douglas Adams · 1992Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? — Douglas Adams · 1979He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it. — Douglas Adams · 1979All 16 quotes →Ernest Hemingway16 quotes
The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it. — Ernest Hemingway · 1940The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry. — Ernest Hemingway · 1929Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters. — Ernest Hemingway · 1926Life isn't hard to manage when you've nothing to lose. — Ernest Hemingway · 1929Luck is a thing that comes in many forms and who can recognize her? — Ernest Hemingway · 1952Isn't it pretty to think so? — Ernest Hemingway · 1926All 16 quotes →Herman Melville16 quotes
There is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men. — Herman Melville · 1851By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike. — Herman Melville · 1851All collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago. — Herman Melville · 1851Aye, toil we how we may, we all sleep at last on the field. Sleep? Aye, and rust amid greenness; as last year's scythes flung down, and left in the half-cut swaths. — Herman Melville · 1851And this is what ye have shipped for, men! to chase that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out. — Herman Melville · 1851Thou art as a lion of the waters and as a dragon of the sea. — Herman Melville · 1851All 16 quotes →Willa Cather16 quotes
The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one’s own. — Willa Cather · 1925The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman. — Willa Cather · 1913Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things. — Willa Cather · 1929There was nothing but land; not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made. — Willa Cather · 1918That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep. — Willa Cather · 1918Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen. — Willa Cather · 1918All 16 quotes →James Joyce15 quotes
He was unheeded, happy and near to the wild heart of life. — James Joyce · 1915They lived und laughed ant loved end left. — James Joyce · 1939His 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 · 1915I desire to press in my arms the loveliness which has not yet come into the world. — James Joyce · 1915A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery. — James Joyce · 1922The sea... The snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea. — James Joyce · 1922All 15 quotes →Marcel Proust15 quotes
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 · 1922The 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 · 1922We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full. — Marcel Proust · 1922Once 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 · 1913Like everybody who is not in love, he imagined that one chose the person whom one loved after endless deliberations and on the strength of various qualities and advantages. — Marcel Proust · 1921There is not a woman in the world the possession of whom is as precious as that of the truths which she reveals to us by causing us to suffer. — Marcel Proust · 1922All 15 quotes →Leo Tolstoy14 quotes
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. — Leo Tolstoy · 1877"What's this? am I falling? my legs are giving way under me," he thought, and fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle of the French soldiers with the artilleryman was ending, and eager to know whether the red-haired artilleryman was killed or not, whether the cannons had been taken or saved. But he saw nothing of all that, Above him there was nothing but the sky-the lofty sky, not clear, but still immeasurably lofty, with gray clouds creeping quietly over it. — Leo Tolstoy · 1869The strongest of all warriors are these two-Time and Patience. — Leo Tolstoy · 1869Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed. — Leo Tolstoy · 1877The subject of history is the life of peoples and of humanity. To catch and pin down in words-that is, to describe directly the life, not only of humanity, but even of a single people, appears to be impossible. — Leo Tolstoy · 1869The eternal error men make in imagining that happiness consists in the gratification of their wishes. — Leo Tolstoy · 1877All 14 quotes →Fyodor Dostoevsky13 quotes
Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most. — Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1866Men reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and honor those whom they have slain. — Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1880We always imagine eternity as something beyond our conception, something vast. But why must it be vast? Instead of all that, what if it’s one little room, like a bath house in the country, black and grimy and spiders in every corner, and that’s all eternity is? — Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1866If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once, be dried up. — Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1879Man is a creature that can get used to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him. — Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1860Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man. — Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1880All 13 quotes →Julian Barnes13 quotes
Yes, of course we were pretentious—what else is youth for? — Julian Barnes · 2011History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation. — Julian Barnes · 2011What you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed. — Julian Barnes · 2011When you're young—when I was young—you want your emotions to be like the ones you read about in books. You want them to overturn your life, create and define a new reality. Later, I think, you want them to do something milder, something more practical: you want them to support your life as it is and has become. You want them to tell you that things are OK. And is there anything wrong with that? — Julian Barnes · 2011We live in time—it holds us and molds us—but I've never felt I understood it very well. And I'm not referring to theories about how it bends and doubles back, or may exist elsewhere in parallel versions. No, I mean ordinary, everyday time, which clocks and watches assure us passes regularly: tick-tock, click-clock. Is there anything more plausible than a second hand? And yet it takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time's malleability. Some emotions speed it up, others slow it down; occasionally, it seems to go missing—until the eventual point when it really does go missing, never to return. — Julian Barnes · 2011Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all it's cracked up to be. — Julian Barnes · 2011All 13 quotes →Miguel de Cervantes13 quotes
Love and War are the same thing, and stratagems and policy are as allowable in the one as in the other. — Miguel de Cervantes · 1615I was so free with him as not to mince the matter. — Miguel de Cervantes · 1605Can we ever have too much of a good thing? — Miguel de Cervantes · 1605You are a king by your own fireside, as much as any monarch in his throne. — Miguel de Cervantes · 1605That's the nature of women... Not to love when we love them, and to love when we love them not. — Miguel de Cervantes · 1605Now blessings light on him that first invented this same sleep! It covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; "Tis meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot." Tis the current coin that purchases all the pleasures of the world cheap; and the balance that sets the king and the shepherd, the fool and the wise man even. — Miguel de Cervantes · 1615All 13 quotes →Milan Kundera13 quotes
When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. — Milan Kundera · 1984For there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes. — Milan Kundera · 1984A person who longs to leave the place where he lives is an unhappy person. — Milan Kundera · 1984Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost. — Milan Kundera · 1984Kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence. — Milan Kundera · 1985None among us is superman enough to escape kitsch completely. No matter how we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition. — Milan Kundera · 1984All 13 quotes →Sinclair Lewis13 quotes
What is Love?... It is the morning and the evening star. — Sinclair Lewis · 1927He loved the People just as much as he feared and detested Persons. — Sinclair Lewis · 1935It isn't what you earn but how you spend it that fixes your class. — Sinclair Lewis · 1935Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on. — Sinclair Lewis · 1935I've never done a single thing I've wanted to in my whole life! I don't know 's I've accomplished anything except just get along. — Sinclair Lewis · 1922Why are you so afraid of the word ‘Fascism,’ Doremus? Just a word-just a word! And might not be so bad, with all the lazy bums we got panhandling relief nowadays, and living on my income tax and yours-not so worse to have a real Strong Man, like Hitler or Mussolini-like Napoleon or Bismarck in the good old days-and have ‘em really run the country and make it efficient and prosperous again. ‘Nother words, have a doctor who won’t take any back-chat, but really boss the patient and make him get well whether he likes it or not! — Sinclair Lewis · 1935All 13 quotes →F. Scott Fitzgerald12 quotes
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. — F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925That's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool. — F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925I don't ask you to love me always like this, but I ask you to remember. Somewhere inside me there'll always be the person I am to-night. — F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1934The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world. — F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or of the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it. — F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1934Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair. — F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925All 12 quotes →Nathaniel Hawthorne12 quotes
Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind. — Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1860We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death. — Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1836Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart! — Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1850No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true. — Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1850On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. — Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1850The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits. — Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1851All 12 quotes →Benjamin Disraeli10 quotes
Time is the great physician. — Benjamin Disraeli · 1837The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons. — Benjamin Disraeli · 1831To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge. — Benjamin Disraeli · 1845I repeat... That all power is a trust - that we are accountable for its exercise - that, from the people, and for the people, all springs, and all must exist. — Benjamin Disraeli · 1826What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens. — Benjamin Disraeli · 1837Christianity is completed Judaism, or it is nothing. Christianity is incomprehensible without Judaism, as Judaism is incomplete without Christianity. — Benjamin Disraeli · 1845All 10 quotes →Charlotte Bronte10 quotes
I would always rather be happy than dignified. — Charlotte Bronte · 1847Reader, I married him. — Charlotte Bronte · 1847I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will. — Charlotte Bronte · 1847It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. — Charlotte Bronte · 1847Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education. — Charlotte Bronte · 1847My future husband was becoming to me my whole world; and more than the world: almost my hope of heaven. He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun. I could not, in those days, see God for His creature: of whom I had made an idol. — Charlotte Bronte · 1847All 10 quotes →Johann Wolfgang von Goethe10 quotes
The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through all eternity. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1808If you inquire what the people are like here, I must answer, "The same as everywhere!" — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1774To know of someone here and there whom we accord with, who is living on with us even in silence-this makes our earthly ball a peopled garden. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1786I have so much in me, and the feeling for her absorbs it all; I have so much, and without her it all comes to nothing. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1774No one is willing to believe that adults too, like children, wander about this earth in a daze and, like children, do not know where they come from or where they are going, act as rarely as they do according to genuine motives, and are as thoroughly governed as they are by biscuits and cake and the rod. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1774A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows on rows of natural objects, classified with name and form. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1808All 10 quotes →Voltaire10 quotes
All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. — Voltaire · 1759If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others? — Voltaire · 1759I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away? — Voltaire · 1759We must cultivate our garden. — Voltaire · 1759Work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice, and need. — Voltaire · 1759She blushed and so did he. She greeted him in a faltering voice, and he spoke to her without knowing what he was saying. — Voltaire · 1759All 10 quotes →Arthur Conan Doyle9 quotes
How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? — Arthur Conan Doyle · 1890It is cocaine...a seven-per-cent solution. Would you care to try it? — Arthur Conan Doyle · 1890It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all of the evidence. It biases the judgement. — Arthur Conan Doyle · 1887What the deuce is it to me? You say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work. — Arthur Conan Doyle · 1887I get in the dumps at times, and don't open my mouth for days on end. You must not think I am sulky when I do that. Just let me alone, and I'll soon be right. — Arthur Conan Doyle · 1887Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones. — Arthur Conan Doyle · 1887All 9 quotes →Arundhati Roy9 quotes
If you're happy in a dream... does that count? — Arundhati Roy · 1997Ammu said that human beings were creatures of habit, and it was amazing the kind of things they could get used to. — Arundhati Roy · 1997And the Air was full of Thoughts and Things to Say. But at times like these, only the Small Things are ever said. Big Things lurk unsaid inside. — Arundhati Roy · 1997This was the trouble with families. Like invidious doctors, they knew just where it hurt. — Arundhati Roy · 1997He folded his fear into a perfect rose. He held it out in the palm of his hand. She took it from him and put it in her hair. — Arundhati Roy · 1997But what was there to say? Only that there were tears. Only that Quietness and Emptiness fitted together like stacked spoons. Only that there was a snuffling in the hollows at the base of a lovely throat. Only that a hard honey-colored shoulder had a semicircle of teethmarks on it. Only that they held each other close, long after it was over. Only that what they shared that night was not happiness, but hideous grief. Only that once again they broke the Love Laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much. — Arundhati Roy · 1997All 9 quotes →Cormac McCarthy9 quotes
When the lambs is lost in the mountain, he said. They is cry. Sometime come the mother. Sometime the wolf. — Cormac McCarthy · 1985You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from. — Cormac McCarthy · 2005Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real. — Cormac McCarthy · 1992Your heart's desire is to be told some mystery. — Cormac McCarthy · 1985War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. — Cormac McCarthy · 1985The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning. — Cormac McCarthy · 1985All 9 quotes →Joseph Conrad9 quotes
There is a weird power in a spoken word... And a word carries far—very far—deals destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space. — Joseph Conrad · 1900My task... To make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you see. That—and no more, and it is everything. — Joseph Conrad · 1897Who knows what true loneliness is—not the conventional word, but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion. Now and then a fatal conjunction of events may lift the veil for an instant. For an instant only. No human being could bear a steady view of moral solitude without going mad. — Joseph Conrad · 1911We live, as we dream—alone. — Joseph Conrad · 1899The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it. — Joseph Conrad · 1899But the artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom: to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition—and, therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives: to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain. — Joseph Conrad · 1897All 9 quotes →Thomas Mann9 quotes
Beauty can pierce one like a pain. — Thomas Mann · 1901Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century beings it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols. — Thomas Mann · 1924A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries. — Thomas Mann · 1924Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours. — Thomas Mann · 1924And waiting means hurrying on ahead, it means regarding time and the present moment not as a boon, but an obstruction; it means making their actual content null and void, by mentally overleaping them. Waiting we say is long. We might just as well-or more accurately-say it is short, since it consumes whole spaces of time without our living them or making any use of them as such. — Thomas Mann · 1924Hold fast the time! Guard it, watch over it, every hour, every minute! Unregarded it slips away, like a lizard, smooth, slippery, faithless, a pixy wife. Hold every moment sacred. Give each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine awareness, each its true and due fulfillment. — Thomas Mann · 1939All 9 quotes →