All Quotes · Page 249

6202 hand-picked quotes from 239 philosophers, writers, and leaders.

Page 249 of 259

“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 inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure…”

— Italo Calvino

“What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space.”

— Italo Calvino

“Don't be amazed if you see my eyes always wandering. In fact, this is my way of reading, and it is only in this way that reading proves fruitful to me.”

— Italo Calvino

“The stimulus of reading is indispensable to me, and of meaty reading, even if, of every book, I manage to read no more than a few pages.”

— Italo Calvino

“But those few pages already enclose for me whole universes, which I can never exhaust.”

— Italo Calvino

“Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven't Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves…”

— Italo Calvino

“But it is the software that gives the orders, acting on the outside world and on machines that exist only as functions of software and evolve so that they can work out ever more…”

— Italo Calvino

“We must have passed through life very unobservantly, if we have never perceived that a man is very much himself what he thinks of others.”

— Frederick William Faber

“The very attempt to be like our dearest Lord is already a well-spring of sweetness within us, flowing with an easy grace over all who come within our reach.”

— Frederick William Faber

“The sea, unmated creature, tired and lone, Makes on its desolate sands eternal moan.”

— Frederick William Faber

“Labour itself is but a sorrowful song, The protest of the weak against the strong.”

— Frederick William Faber

“Dear Lord! in all our loneliest pains Thou hast the largest share, And that which is unbearable 'Tis Thine, not ours, to bear.”

— Frederick William Faber

“For right is right, since God is God; And right the day must win; To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter would be sin.”

— Frederick William Faber

“If our love were but more simple, We should take Him at His word; And our lives would be all sunshine In the sweetness of the Lord.”

— Frederick William Faber

“I have no cares, O blessed Will! For all my cares are Thine; I live in triumph, Lord! for Thou Hast made Thy triumphs mine.”

— Frederick William Faber

“Yesterday This Day's Madness did prepare; To-morrow's Silence, Triumph, or Despair: Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why: Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.”

— Omar Khayyam

“With Earth's first Clay They did the Last Man knead, And there of the Last Harvest sow'd the Seed: And the first Morning of Creation wrote What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall…”

— Omar Khayyam

“Ah, Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire, Would not we shatter it to bits — and then Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!”

— Omar Khayyam

“Alas, that Spring should vanish with the Rose! That Youth's sweet-scented Manuscript should close! The Nightingale that in the Branches sang, Ah, whence, and whither flown again…”

— Omar Khayyam

“Ah, Moon of my Delight who know'st no wane, The Moon of Heav'n is rising once again: How oft hereafter rising shall she look Through this same Garden after me — in vain!”

— Omar Khayyam

“Would but some wing'ed Angel ere too late Arrest the yet unfolded Roll of Fate, And make the stern Recorder otherwise Enregister, or quite obliterate!”

— Omar Khayyam

“Indeed the Idols I have loved so long Have done my credit in this World much wrong: Have drown'd my Glory in a shallow Cup And sold my Reputation for a Song.”

— Omar Khayyam

“The Vine had struck a fibre: which about If clings my being — let the Dervish flout; Of my Base metal may be filed a Key, That shall unlock the Door he howls without.”

— Omar Khayyam