Book Quotes

"I give it [watch] to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools."
--Faulkner - The Sound and the Fury

"I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The writer's duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. "
--Faulkner - Nobel Prize Speech

"The essence of religious feeling does not come under any reasoning or atheism, and has nothing to do with any crimes or misdemeanors. There is something else here, and there will always be something else--something that the atheists will for ever slur over; they will forever be talking of something else."
--Dostoevsky - The Idiot

"Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to the passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete bestiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself."
--Dostoevsky - The Brothers Karamazov

"What did he fear? It was not fear or dread. It was a nothing and that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and man was nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it was all nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada."
--Hemingway - A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."
Hamlet. . . Shakespeare.

time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so

douglas adams - the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

"Ask us no questions and we'll telll you no lies." - fred weasley, harry potter

lol

i just really like it

" I fear those big words that make us so unhappy."

Steven Dedalus
James Joyces Ullysses