*solitude, extended for a sufficiently long period of time, becomes its own reward and nourishment. A weary souls voice aloud can become repugnant to its own ears, and for years these had been the only voices he had heard, and spoken back to, until they had become his own voice." --Couldsplitter
No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true. -Nathanial Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
*I'm going to drag you kicking and screaming fighting you all the way into the GOOD side of life, whether you like it or not, cause that's just how I roll." -- The Lord, spoken to me many years ago.
No knowledge can be of more use to a young person than the knowledge of himself; no study can be more valuable to him than a study of himself. - WILLIAM HENRY PYLE PROFESSOR OF EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI; Human Nature, A psychology for Beginners
I say that one must be a seer, make oneself a seer. The poet makes himself a seer by a long, prodigious, and rational disordering of all the senses. Every form of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he consumes all the poisons in him, and keeps only their quintessences. This is an unspeakable torture during which he needs all his faith and superhuman strength, and during which he becomes the great patient, the great criminal, the great accursed – and the great learned one! – among men. – For he arrives at the unknown! Because he has cultivated his own soul – which was rich to begin with – more than any other man! He reaches the unknown; and even if, crazed, he ends up by losing the understanding of his visions, at least he has seen them! Let him die charging through those unutterable, unnameable things: other horrible workers will come; they will begin from the horizons where he has succumbed! - Rimbaud, in a letter to Paul Demeny, 15th May 1871
Fear is not real. The only place that fear can exist is in our thoughts of the future. It is a product of our imagination, causing us to fear things that do not at present and may not ever exist. That is near insanity Kitai. Do not misunderstand me, danger is very real, but fear is a choice. We are all telling ourselves a story and that day mine changed. - Will Smith, playing Cypher Raige, After Earth
“Being different is a revolving door in your life where secure people enter and insecure exit.” -Shannon Alder
“I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.” ― Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat
“Love...no such thing. Whatever it is that binds families and married couples together, that's not love. That's stupidity or selfishness or fear. Love doesn't exist. Self interest exists, attachment based on personal gain exists, complacency exists. But not love. Love has to be reinvented, that’s certain.” ― Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat
“I understand, and not knowing how to express myself without pagan words, I’d rather remain silent” ― Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat
“In the morning I had a look so lost, a face so dead, that perhaps those whom I met did not see me.” ― Arthur Rimbaud
“I is another.” ― Arthur Rimbaud
“Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.” ― Arthur Rimbaud, Une saison en enfer; Illuminations; et autres textes
“Come from forever, and you will go everywhere.” ― Arthur Rimbaud
“I found I could extinguish all human hope from my soul.” ― Arthur Rimbaud, Une saison en enfer; Illuminations; et autres textes
If the old imbeciles hadn’t discovered only the false significance of Self, we wouldn’t have to now sweep away those millions of skeletons which have been piling up the products of their one-eyed intellect since time immemorial, and claiming themselves to be their authors!” ― Arthur Rimbaud
“He would say, "How funny it will all seem, all you've gone through, when I'm not here anymore, when you no longer feel my arms around your shoulders, nor my heart beneath you, nor this mouth on your eyes, because I will have to go away some day, far away..." And in that instant I could feel myself with him gone, dizzy with fear, sinking down into the most horrible blackness: into death.” ― Arthur Rimbaud
“...these poets here, you see, they are not of this world:let them live their strange life; let them be cold and hungry, let them run, love and sing: they are as rich as Jacques Coeur, all these silly children, for they have their souls full of rhymes, rhymes which laugh and cry, which make us laugh or cry: Let them live: God blesses all the merciful: and the world blesses the poets.” ― Arthur Rimbaud
“Is it in these bottomless nights that you sleep in exile?” --Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat
A dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down.” ― Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat
“It was the voice of mad seas, roaring immense,/ That shattered your infant breast, too soft, too human.” ― Arthur Rimbaud
“La vraie vie est absente. Nous ne sommes pas au monde.” ― Arthur Rimbaud
“Love seeketh not itself to please, nor for itself hath any care, but for another gives its ease, and builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.” ― William Blake, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience
“سعارُ اليأس يدفع بي في وجه كل شيء: الطبيعة، الأشياء، أنا نفسي، هذا كله الذي أريد أنا تمزيقه” ― Arthur Rimbaud
“You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.” ― William Blake
“My mother groaned, my father wept, into the dangerous world I leapt.” ― William Blake
“Better to shun the bait than struggle in the snare.” ― William Blake
“Those who control their passions do so because their passions are weak enough to be controlled.” ― William Blake
“When a sinister person means to be your enemy, they always start by trying to become your friend.” ― William Blake
“How can the bird that is born for joy Sit in a cage and sing?” - William Blake
“You cannot have Liberty in this world without what you call Moral Virtue, and you cannot have Moral Virtue without the slavery of that half of the human race who hate what you call Moral Virtue.” ― William Blake
"Never be angry when fools behave like fools. It's better when fools identify themselves. It removes so much uncertainty." - Orson Scott Card, Wyrms
"The king cares only for the good of the kings house. But the king's house is all the world." - Orson Scott Card, Wyrms
"Father told me once,"' she said. "There are two ways to rule human beings. One is to convince the people that if they do not obey they and those they love will be destroyed. The other is to earn the love of the people. And he told me where these two ways lead. Eventually, the course of terror leads to revolution and anarchy. Eventually, the course of flattery leads to contempt and anarchy.""So he believes no power can last?""No. Because there is a third way. It looks like the course of love sometimes, and sometimes it looks like the course of terror.""Back and forth between the two? The people wouldn't know you then, and none would follow you.""No. It isn't back and forth between anything. It's a straight and steady course. The course of magnanimity. Greatness of heart.""It means nothing to me. One of the cardinal virtues but the priests don't even know what it means.""To love your people so much that you would sacrifice anything for the good of the whole. Your own life, your own family, your own happiness. And then you expect the same from them." - Orson Scott Card, Wyrms
Angel took great delight in teaching Patience to go to the heart of an argument and find its weak place. Then she would confront the would-be philosopher and skewer him publicly. She didn't do it often, but enjoyed knowing that she could, whenever she liked. Learn something? Not at the School. It wasn't learning she was after anyway. It was freedom. - Orson Scott Card, Wyrms
"The most perfect disguise is to change from one sex to another, for when they are searching for a girl, all boys are invisible to them." -Orson Scott
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain." - Frank Herbert, Dune, The Litany of Fear
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
The God of Small Things Quotes (showing 1-30 of 238)
“And the air was full of Thoughts and Things to Say. But at times like these, only the Small Things are ever said. Big Things lurk unsaid inside.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
“But what was there to say?
Only that there were tears. Only that Quietness and Emptiness fitted together like stacked spoons. Only that there was a snuffling in the hollows at the base of a lovely throat. Only that a hard honey-colored shoulder had a semicircle of teethmarks on it. Only that they held each other close, long after it was over. Only that what they shared that night was not happiness, but hideous grief.
Only that once again they broke the Love Laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
“Perhaps it’s true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of a burned house—the charred clock, the singed photograph, the scorched furniture—must be resurrected from the ruins and examined. Preserved. Accounted for. Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Imbued with new meaning. Suddenly they become the bleached bones of a story.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
