Tag: misfortune

Franz Kafka Quotes

Posted on December 29, 2011January 3, 2012 by

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.

A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.

Always first draw fresh breath after outbursts of vanity and complacency.

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate… but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away; but this opinion was all that he was permitted.

Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

By imposing too great a responsibility, or rather, all responsibility, on yourself, you crush yourself.

Don Quixote’s misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.

Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair.

Dread of night. Dread of not-night.

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

Evil is whatever distracts.

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.

God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.

Hope Quotes

Posted on February 11, 2011 by

– “The Grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.” – Allan K. Chalmers

– “If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

– “Not only is another world possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” – Arundhati Roy

– “We’ve been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.” – Barack Obama

– “Hope is what led a band of colonists to rise up against an empire; what led the greatest of generations to free a continent and heal a nation; what led young women and young men to sit at lunch counters and brave fire hoses and march through Selma and Montgomery for freedom’s cause. Hope is what led me here today — with a father from Kenya, a mother from Kansas; and a story that could only happen in the United States of America. Hope is the bedrock of this nation; the belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us; by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is; who have courage to remake the world as it should be. [January 3, 2008]” – Barack Obama

– “However, one cannot put a quart in a pint cup” – Charlotte Perkins Gilman

– “Once you choose hope, anything’s possible” – Christopher Reeve

– “Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all” – Dale Carnegie

– “Sanity may be madness but the maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be” – Don Quixote

– “Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding; and that there is always tomorrow” – Dorothy Thompson

– “Fear grows in darkness; if you think there’s a bogeyman around, turn on the light” – Dorothy Thompson

– “I have learned two lessons in my life: first, there are no sufficient literary, psychological, or historical answers to human tragedy, only moral ones. Second, just as despair can come to one another only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings” – Elie Wiesel

Jane Austen Quotes

Posted on December 16, 2010 by

• For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?

• About history: The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all — it is very tiresome.

• Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.

• One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.

• A woman, especially if she has the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.

• One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.

• If there is anything disagreeable going on men are always sure to get out of it.

• What strange creatures brothers are!

• A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.

• Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure to be kindly spoken of.

• It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

• If a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him. If she can hesitate as to Yes, she ought to say No, directly.

• It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should refuse an offer of marriage.

• Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!

• Nobody minds having what is too good for them.

• A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill.

• Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.

• It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy; it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.

• Man is more robust than woman, but he is not longer lived; which exactly explains my view of the nature of their attachments.

• If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory.

• I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me that trouble of liking them

One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it unless it has all been suffering, nothing but suffering.

• Those who do not complain are never pitied.

• It is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?

• From politics, it was an easy step to silence.

• A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.

• It is very difficult for the prosperous to be humble.

• How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!

• … as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation.

• … the soul is of no sect, no party: it is, as you say, our passions and our prejudices, which give rise to our religious and political distinctions.

• You 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.