When a thought is too weak to be expressed simply, it should be rejected. - Marquis De Vauvenargues
Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue. - Duc de La Rochefoucauld
Materialism coursens and petrifies everything, making everything vulgar, and every truth false. - Henri Frederic Amiel
I can usually judge a fellow by what he laughs at. - Wilson Mizner
Many people lose their tempers merely from seeing you keep yours. - Frank Moore Colby
There’s no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow. - Edith Wharton
A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn’t. - Tom Waits
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of a man is to live, not to exist. - Jack London
But lo! men have become the tools of their tools. The man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer; and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper. We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven.
I would not have any one adopt my mode of living on any account; for, beside that before he has fairly learned it I may have found out another for myself, I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible; but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father’s or his mother’s or his neighbor’s instead. - Henry David Thoreau
A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved. - Kurt Vonnegut
L’inferno dei viventi non è qualcosa che sarà; se ce n’è uno, è quello che è già qui, l’inferno che abitiamo tutti i giorni, che formiamo stando insieme. Due modi ci sono per non soffrirne. Il primo riesce facile a molti: accettare l’inferno e diventarne parte fino al punto di non vederlo piú. Il secondo è rischioso ed esige attenzione e apprendimento continui: cercare e saper riconoscere chi e cosa, in mezzo all’inferno, non è inferno, e farlo durare, e dargli spazio.
The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space. - Italo Calvino