A man who cannot seduce men cannot save them either.
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
Boredom is a partly an inborn talent, partly an acquired immediacy.
Boredom is the root of all evil- the despairing refusal to be oneself.
But he who cannot reveal himself cannot love, and he who cannot love is the most unhappy man of all.
Deep within every human being there still lives the anxiety over the possibility of being alone in the world, forgotten by God, overlooked among the millions and millions in this enormous household.
Freedom's possibility is not the ability to choose the good or the evil. The possibility is to be able.
I must find a truth that is true for me.
If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin.
If I have ventured wrongly, very well, life then helps me with its penalty. But if I haven't ventured at all, who helps me then?
If I were a father and had a daughter who was seduced, I would not despair over her. But if I had a son who became a journalist and continued to remain one for five years, I would give him up.
In a theater, it happened that a fire started offstage. The clown came out to tell the audience. They thought it was a joke and applauded. He told them again, and they became still more hilarious. This is the way, I suppose, that the world will be destroyed- amid the universal hilarity of wits and wags who think it is all a joke.
Irony is a qualification of subjectivity.
It is perfectly true, as the philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.
It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand.
It is very important in life to know when your cue comes.
Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste they hurry past it.
My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known- no wonder, then, that I return the love.
My sorrow is my castle.
Once you label me, you negate me.
One sticks one's finger into the soil to tell by the smell in what land one is: I stick my finger in existence- it smells of nothing.
Only one deception is possible in the infinite sense, self-deception.
People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence and they think they have seen something.
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
People do not know what they ought to say but only that they must say something.
People nowadays go to church to be entertained and to the theater to be edified.
People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.
Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.
Silence is the snare of the demon, and the more one keeps silent, the more terrifying the demon becomes.
Take away paradox from the thinker and you have a professor.
The dread of sin can sometimes in effect drive a person into sin through dread.
The initial expression of defiance is precisely despair over one's weakness.
The more one suffers, the more, I believe, one has a sense of the comic. It is only by the deepest suffering that one acquires the authority in the art of the comic.
The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever.
The truth is a trap: you cannot get it without it getting you; you cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you.
The truth must essentially be regarded as in conflict with this world; the world has never been so good, and will never become so good that the majority will desire the truth.
The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins.
The word of comfort must first of all wound more deeply before it can heal.
There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.
To be a human being, to live here in this world, is to be tested.
To die with a witticism on one's lips, that is a proud victory, that is paganism's triumph; and it is also the ultimate in human relationships.
What really counts in life is that at some time you have seen something, felt something, which is so great, so matchless, that everything else is nothing by comparison, that even if you forgot everything, you would never forget this.
When a person grows older he often scrutinizes his thoughts and retards himself.
Which is more difficult, to awaken one who sleeps or to awaken one who, awake, dreams that he is awake?
Found 44 occurence(s) in 52,543 quotation(s).
Categories: Quotes of the day
KGB Quotation Database Search page design and software
contributed by Rafal Sulejman.
