A collection of quotes I have stumbled upon over the years, useful only to imbue a smug sense of self satisfaction.
“Rousseau writes for writing’s sake, I write to act” – Voltaire
“All sad people like poetry. Happy people like songs” – Penny Dreadful – Vanessa Ives
“There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love”- Excerpt From: The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
“We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all” – Pericles
“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors“ – Plato
“If we weren’t all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting we couldn’t endure it” – Schopenhauer
‘Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it , you will regret it either way; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it; believe a woman or believe her not, you will regret it either way; believing a woman or not believing her, you will regret it both ways. Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy” – Kierkegaard
“There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating, people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing” – Excerpt From: The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
“Gaining anything we have longed for is only to discover how vain and empty it is; though we always live in expectation of better things, at the same time we often repent and desire the past back again” – Schopenhauer
[on dealing with depression] “A single negative thought begins in your head. That single negative thought interacts with another negative thought and becomes a reality. And the world seems like the darkest, bleakest, blackest place that you can possibly be. And it has nothing to do with logic, it has nothing to do with reality. It’s a chemical, and I suppose ultimately becomes a spiritual, imbalance in the body and in the mind. But it feels like the truth. That’s what’s so insidious about it” – Gabriel Byrne
“Sadly, there is nothing more creatively unproductive than happiness” – David Rule
“I walked about feeling worse and worse. Perhaps it was because I had stayed over instead of going home. It was like prolonging the agony. What kind of shit was I? I could certainly play some nasty, unreal games. What was my motive? Was I trying to get even for something? Could I keep on telling myself that it was merely a matter of research, a simple study of the female? I was simply letting things happen without thinking about them. I wasn’t considering anything but my own selfish, cheap pleasure. I was like a spoiled high school kid. I was worse than any whore; a whore took your money and nothing more. I tinkered with lives and souls as if they were my playthings. How could I call myself a man? How could I write poems? What did I consist of? I was a bush-league de Sade, without his intellect. A murderer was more straightforward and honest than I was. Or a rapist. I didn’t want my soul played with, mocked, pissed on; I knew that much at any rate. I was truly no good. I could feel it as I walked up and down on the rug. No good. The worst part of it was that I passed myself off for exactly what I wasn’t–a good man. I was able to enter people’s lives because of their trust in me. I was doing my dirty work the easy way. I was writing The Love Tale of the Hyena” On Women – Charles Bukowski
“Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty” – Mark Twain
“There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them” – George Orwell
“Power is a lot like real estate. It’s all about location, location, location. The closer you are to the source, the higher your property value” – House Of Cards – Frank Underwood
“Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point” – Arthur Schopenhauer
“An inner voice, always used to be an outer voice. We’ve absorbed the tone of a harassed or angry parent; the menacing threats of an elder sibling keen to put us down; the words of a schoolyard bully or a teacher who seemed impossible to please. We internalised the unhelpful voices because at certain key moments in the past they sounded compelling. The authority figures repeated their messages over and over until they got lodged in our own way of thinking.” – The Book Of Life – http://www.thebookoflife.org/on-stress-and-inner-voices/
“Life, for all its anguish, is ours. It belongs to no other” – Penny Dreadful – Ferdinand Lyle
“Man may have the most excellent judgment in all other matters, and yet go wrong in those which concern himself; because here the will comes in and deranges the intellect at once. Therefore let a man take counsel of a friend. A doctor can cure everyone but himself; if he falls ill, he sends for a colleague” – Schopenhauer
“Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing” – George Orwell
“Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible” – Excerpt From: Wilde, Oscar. “The Picture of Dorian Gray.”