Quotes Archives - Shubhayan Mukherjee

Writing

mile.stojanov — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 13:08:17 +0000

Writing comes more easily if you have something to say.

Sholem Asch

In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.

W. H. Auden

A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.

Gaston Bachelard

The pen is mightier than the sword.

Bulwer - Lytton

If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad. As to that regular, uninterrupted love of writing ... I do not understand it. I feel it as a torture, which I must get rid of, but never as a pleasure. On the contrary, I think composition a great pain.

Lord Byron

The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.

Elias Canetti

Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease.

Charles Caleb Colton

Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.

E. L. Doctorow

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.

E. L. Doctorow

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

J. P. Donleavy

The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the school-masters of ever afterward.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mould, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.

Edward Gibbon

Great authors are admirable in this respect: in every generation they make for disagreement. Through them we become aware of our differences.

Andre Gide

The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.

Andre Gide

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

Samuel Johnson

It's hard enough to write a good drama, it's much harder to write a good comedy, and it's hardest of all to write a drama with comedy. Which is what life is.

Jack Lemmon

If you have one strong idea, you can't help repeating it and embroidering it. Sometimes I think that authors should write one novel and then be put in a gas chamber.

John P. Marquand

Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning: I wanted to know what I was going to say.

Sharon O'Brien

It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? for the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind.

Vita Sackville - West

What I like in a good author isn't what he says, but what he whispers.

Logan Pearsall Smith

A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.

Henry David Thoreau

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Words

mile.stojanov — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 13:05:12 +0000

I'm very anxious not to fall into archaism or "literary" diction. I want my vocabulary to have a very large range, but the words must be alive.

James Agee

Words convey the mental treasures of one period to the generations that follow; and laden with this, their precious freight, they sail safely across gulfs of time in which empires have suffered shipwreck and the languages of common life have sunk into oblivion.

Anonymous

I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. Then words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young. And the words wander away, looking in the nooks and crannies of vocabulary for new company, bad company.

Gaston Bachelard

Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbours, we have got to live with them and must make the best and not the worst of them.

Samuel Butler

But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew, upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.

Lord Byron

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less."

Lewis Carroll

Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality.

Joseph Conrad

It's strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words.

T. S. Eliot

English is such a deliciously complex and undisciplined language, we can bend, fuse, distort words to all our purposes. We give old words new meanings, and we borrow new words from any language that intrudes into our intellectual environment.

Willard Gaylin

Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.

Ernest Hemingway

Words, like glass, obscure when they do not aid vision.

Joseph Joubert

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

Rudyard Kipling

We should have a great fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.

John Locke

A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.

Charles Peguy

A wise man hears one word and understands two.

Yiddish Proverb

Words not only affect us temporarily; they change us, they socialize or unsocialize us.

David Riesman

Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them.

Adlai Stevenson

One forgets words as one forgets names. One's vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.

Evelyn Waugh

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Wisdom

mile.stojanov — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 13:02:51 +0000

The price of wisdom is above rubies.

Bible - Job 28:18

Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom; and with all they getting get understanding.

Bible - Proverbs 4:7

Mixing one's wines may be a mistake, but old and new wisdom mix admirably.

Bertolt Brecht

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

Cicero

There is this difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man, really is so; but he that thinks himself the wisest, is generally the greatest fool.

Charles Caleb Colton

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves.

Thomas Hobbes

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

Thomas Jefferson

We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.

G. C. Lichtenberg

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom; the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.

Walter Lippmann

I do know of these that therefore only are reputed wise for saying nothing. So wise so young, they say, do never live long.

William Shakespeare

To be wise and love exceeds man's might: that dwells with the gods above.

William Shakespeare

Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know.

Socrates

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Weekend

mile.stojanov — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 13:00:51 +0000

Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.

Joseph Addison

It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless; and a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London.

Thomas De Quincey

The rhythm of the weekend, with its birth, its planned gaieties, and its announced end, followed the rhythm of life and was a substitute for it.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The feeling of Sunday is the same everywhere, heavy, melancholy, standing still. Like when they say, "As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end."

Jean Rhys

How pleasant is Saturday night, when I've tried all the week to be good, and not spoke a word that was bad, and obliged everyone that I could.

Nancy Sproat

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Weather

mile.stojanov — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 12:57:54 +0000

Rain! whose soft architectural hands have power to cut stones, and chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains.

Henry Ward Beecher

There's always a period of curious fear between the first sweet-smelling breeze and the time when the rain comes cracking down.

Don DeLillo

There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind.

Annie Dillard

For the man sound in body and serene of mind there is no such thing as bad weather, every sky has its beauty, and storms which whip the blood do but make it pulse more vigorously.

George Gissing

The snow itself is lonely or, if you prefer, self-sufficient. There is no other time when the whole world seems composed of one thing and one thing only.

Joseph Wood Krutch

One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.

John Steinbeck

Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.

John Updike

My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die!

William Woodsworth

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Voting

mile.stojanov — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 12:52:14 +0000

Suffrage is the pivotal right.

Susan B. Anthony

The average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind or a hundredth part of one. A man ought to vote with the whole of himself, as he worships or gets married. A man ought to vote with his head and heart, his soul and stomach, his eye for faces and his ear for music; also (when sufficiently provoked) with his hands and feet. If he has ever seen a fine sunset, the crimson colour of it should creep into his vote ... The question is not so much whether only a minority of the electorate votes. The point is that only a minority of the voter votes.

G. K. Chesterton

Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good: 'Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.

Lyndon B. Johnson

I just received the following wire from my generous Daddy - "Dear Jack, Don't buy a single vote more than is necessary. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide."

John F. Kennedy

The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.

John F. Kennedy

To make democracy work, we must be a notion of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.

Louis L'Amour

Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.

Abraham Lincoln

Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal - that you can gather votes like box tops - is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.

Adlai Stevenson

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Vanity

mile.stojanov — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 12:47:47 +0000

Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity, to what we would have others think of us.

Jane Austin

I scarce ever heard or saw the introductory words, "Without vanity I may say," etc., but some vain thing immediately followed.

Benjamin Franklin

Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory.

Conrad Joseph

Nothing so soothes our vanity as a display of greater vanity in others; it makes us vain, in fact, of our modesty.

Louis Kronenberger

Mirrors are ice which do not melt: what melts are those who admire themselves in them.

Paul Morand

A woman doesn't care if she hasn't a stomach, provided she looks as if she hasn't.

Flann O'Brien

To be a man's own fool is bad enough, but the vain man is everybody's.

William Penn

Vanity dies hard; in some obstinate cases it outlives the man.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Whatever talents I possess may suddenly diminish or suddenly increase. I can with ease become an ordinary fool. I may be one now. But it doesn't do to upset one's own vanity.

Dylan Thomas

No man thinks there is much ado about nothing when the ado is about himself.

Anthony Trollope

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Universe

mile.stojanov — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 12:45:14 +0000

There was no "before" the beginning of our universe, because once upon a time there was no time.

John D. Barrow

I don't pretend to understand the Universe - it's a great deal bigger than I am.

Thomas Carlyle

A universe that came from nothing in the big bang will disappear into nothing at the big crunch. Its glorious few zillion years of existence not even a memory.

Paul Davies

Anyone informed that the universe is expanding and contracting in pulsations of eighty billion years has a right to ask, "What's in it for me?"

Peter De Vries

Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

J. B. S. Haldane

Nothing puzzles me more than the time and space; and yet nothing troubles me less.

Charles Lamb

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Truth

mile.stojanov — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 12:42:02 +0000

The truth shall make you free.

Bible - John 8:32

A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.

William Blake

A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.

Sir Thomas Browne

How can sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.

Albert Camus

The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

Willa Cather

Truth indeed rather alleviates than hurts, and will always bear up against falsehood, as oil does above water.

Miguel de Cervantes

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please; you can never have both.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.

Nadine Gordimer

The truth has never been of any real value to any human being - it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

Graham Greene

It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless of course you are an exceptionally good liar.

Jerome K. Jerome

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.

Samuel Johnson

Truth is a point, the subtlest and finest; harder than adamant; never to be broken, worn away or blunted. Its only bad quality is, that it is sure to hurt those who touch it; and likely to draw blood, perhaps the life blood of those who press earnestly upon it.

Walter Savage Landor

We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.

Blaise Pascal

Familiarity breeds contempt. How accurate that is. The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it.

Mark Twain

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain't so.

Mark Twain

Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.

Walt Whitman

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

Oscar Wilde

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Trust

mile.stojanov — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 12:40:12 +0000

Who would not rather trust and be deceived?

Eliza Cook

Trust everybody, but cut the cards.

Finley Peter Dunne

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall - to - wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country - and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.

Charles Krauthammer

He got a corporation mind. He don't believe in nature; he puts his trust and distrust in man.

Norman Mailer

No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.

H. L. Mencken

It is an equal failing to trust everybody, and to trust nobody.

English Proverb

A man who doesn't trust himself can never really trust anyone else.

Cardinal De Retz

Love all, trust a few.

William Shakespeare

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