Coatl > Coatl's Quotes

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“What labels me, negates me.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard

“Once you label me you negate me.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant… My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known — no wonder, then, that I return the love.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life

“The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you'll never have.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music.... And people flock around the poet and say: 'Sing again soon' - that is, 'May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, Either - Or

“It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“The proud person always wants to do the right thing, the great thing. But because he wants to do it in his own strength, he is fighting not with man, but with God.”
― Soren A. Kierkegaard

“What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard

“Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“All Moanday, Tearday, Wailsday, Thumpsday, Frightday, Shatterday.”
― James Joyce

“You made me confess the fears that I have. But I will tell you also what I do not fear. I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake and perhaps as long as eternity too.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.

from “Araby”
― James Joyce, Dubliners

“Why is it that words like these seem dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?”
― James Joyce, The Dead

“Your battles inspired me - not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead.”
― James Joyce

“and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.”
― James Joyce, Dubliners

“Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.”
― James Joyce

“Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.”
― James Joyce, Dubliners

“Too excited to be genuinely happy”
― James Joyce, Dubliners

“But we are living in a skeptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age; and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hypereducated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humor which belonged to an older day..”
― James Joyce

“I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“There's no friends like the old friends.”
― James Joyce, Dubliners