Wisdom
Quotes
The Sense
of Tragedy
“I've
learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands;
you need to be able to throw some things back.”
―
Maya Angelou
“Water
is the softest thing, yet it can penetrate mountains and earth. This shows
clearly the principle of
softness
overcoming hardness.”
―
Lao Zi
“Nobody
knows like a woman how to say things that are both sweet and profound.
Sweetness and depth, this is all of woman; this is Heaven.”
―
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
“The
sense of tragedy - according to Aristotle - comes, ironically enough, not from
the protagonist's weak points but from his good qualities. Do you know what I'm
getting at? People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by
their virtues.
...
[But]
we accept irony through a device called metaphor. And through that we grow and
become deeper human beings.”
―
Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
“When
in doubt, choose to live.”
―
Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time
“The
wisest are the most annoyed at the loss of time.”
―
Dante Alighieri
“Obscurity
and a competence—that is the life that is best worth living.”
―
Mark Twain, Notebook
“The
invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.”
―
Emerson
“A
man without words is a man without thought.”
―
John Steinbeck, East of Eden
“Even
a soul submerged in sleep
is
hard at work and helps
make
something of the world.”
―
Heraclitus, Fragments
“You
have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth,
and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of
some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead
of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you
who exchange heaven for earth. I don't want to understand you.”
―
Anton Chekhov
“So
wise so young, they say, do never live long.”
―
William Shakespeare, Richard III
“Nature
is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy”
―
Isaac Newton
“When
you look at what C.S. Lewis is saying, his message is so anti-life, so cruel,
so unjust. The view that the Narnia books have for the material world is one of
almost undisguised contempt. At one point, the old professor says, ‘It’s all in
Plato’ — meaning that the physical world we see around us is the crude, shabby,
imperfect, second-rate copy of something much better. I want to emphasize the
simple physical truth of things, the absolute primacy of the material life,
rather than the spiritual or the afterlife.
[The
New York Times interview, 2000]”
―
Philip Pullman
“An
acquaintance merely enjoys your company, a fair-weather companion flatters when
all is well, a true friend has your best interests at heart and the pluck to
tell you what you need to hear.”
―
E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly,
“To
wisely live your life, you don't need to know much
Just
remember two main rules for the beginning:
You
better starve, than eat whatever
And
better be alone, than with whoever.”
―
Omar Khayyám, Rubaiyat
“Sorrow
looks back, Worry looks around, Faith looks up”
―
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Hate
is... It's too easy. Love. Love takes courage.”
―
Hannah Harrington, Speechless
“I
do not know everything; still many things I understand.”
―
Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
