Category: quotes

In Praise of Sorrow

Who never ate his bread in sorrow,

Who never spent the midnight hours

Weeping and waiting for the morrow –

He knows you not, ye heavenly powers.

GOETHE

* * *

I now see that sorrow, being the supreme emotion of which man is capable, is at once the type and test of all great art.



If the world has indeed […] been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of Love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. Pleasure for the beautiful body, but pain for the beautiful soul.

OSCAR WILDE, De Profundis

The Enchantress of Florence: Quotes

I’ll try and write a review for this masterpiece of a book in some time. But before that, a couple of memorable quotes.

* * *

‘There is no particular wisdom in the East,’ [Qara Köz / Angelica] said to Argalia. ‘All human beings are foolish to the same degree.’

The curse of the human race is not that we are so different from one another, but that we are so alike.
Niccolò Vespucci, or Mogor dell’Amore, to Akbar, Emperor of Hindustan

(From The Enchantress of Florence, by Salman Rushdie)

The Meaning of Courage

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.”
Atticus Finch to his son Jem in To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee.

This definition of courage appeals to me more than any other, and has actually made me see some things clearly.

Taught, taught, taught

Of course I know that the sort of intellectual arguments that I have been talking to you about are not what necessarily moves people. What really moves people to believe in God is not any intellectual argument at all. Most people believe in God because they have been taught in early infancy to do it, and that is the main reason.

BERTRAND RUSSELL, Why I’m not a Christian and other Essays

Tit for tat?

Alexander Dumas’ (pere, 1802-1870) reputed response to a snide comment on his heritage is a rich repartee.

“My father was a mulatto, my grandmother was a negress and my great grandparents were monkeys. My pedigree begins where yours ends”

Lolz