Quotes Myself (page 84)
As I age in the world it will rise and spread, and be for this place horizonand orison, the voice of its winds. I have made myself a dream to dreamof its rising, that has gentled my nights. Let me desire and wish well the lifethese trees may live when Ino longer rise in the morningsto be pleased with the green of themshining, and their shadows on the ground, and the sound of the wind in them.
Wendell Berry
First, not a word more from you about the past. There was an error in your calculations. I know what that is. It affects the whole machine, and failure is the consequence. You will profit by the failure, and will avoid it another time. I have done a similar thing myself, in construction, often. Every failure teaches a man something, if he will learn; and you are too sensible a man not to learn from this failure.
Charles Dickens
I could not become anything: neither bad nor good, neither a scoundrel nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect. And now I am eking out my days in my corner, taunting myself with the bitter and entirely useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot seriously become anything; that only a fool can become something.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
I, myself, have killed six people. All random, all undetected, no way to trace them to me. And, let me tell you, there's nothin' like it. It's a great feeling. Yeah, I know, you're thinking. 'Aw, he's a comedian. He's just sayin' that stuff.' Good. That's exactly what I want you to think.
George Carlin
I walked about the isle like a restless spectre, separated from all it loved, and miserable in the separation. When it became noon, and the sun rose higher, I lay down on the grass, and was overpowered by a deep sleep. I had been awake the whole of the preceding night, my nerves were agitated, and my eyes inflamed by watching and misery, The sleep into which I now sunk refreshed me; and when I awoke, I again felt as if I belonged to a race of human beings like myself, and I began to reflect...
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
XXIXYou have set me among those who are defeated. I know it is not for me to win, nor to leave the game. I shall plunge into the pool although but to sink to the bottom. I shall play the game of my undoing. I shall stake all I have and when I lose my last penny I shall stake myself, and then I think I shall have won through my utter defeat.
Rabindranath Tagore
Then all at once she turned to me, her face pale, her eyes strangely alight. She said, “Is it possible to love someone so much, that it gives one a pleasure to hurt them? To hurt them by jealousy, I mean, and to hurt myself at the same time. Pleasure and pain, an equal mingling of pleasure and pain, just as an experiment, a rare sensation?
Daphne du Maurier