Nona Dramova > Nona's Quotes

“He watched her for several minutes. Something was stirred in him, something not accounted for by the warm smell of the afternoon or the triumphant vividness of red. He felt persistently that the girl was beautiful — then of a sudden he understood: it was her distance, not a rare and precious distance of soul but still distance, if only in terrestrial yards. The autumn air was between them, and the roofs and the blurred voices. Yet for a not altogether explained second, posing perversely in time, his emotion had been nearer to adoration than in the deepest kiss he had ever known.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

“Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.”
― Charles M. Schulz

“Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals. It is a mental torture I find debasing... I simply cannot get used to the nightly betrayal of reason, humanity, genius.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory

“You are remarkably modern, Mabel. A little too modern, perhaps. Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern. One is apt to grow old-fashioned quite suddenly.”
― Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

“Искам някъде теб да те има...

Във една заснежена гора,

в малка къща с горяща камина

и с прозорче със ледни цветя.

Да ни свети единствено огънят...

А в ъглите, в стаения здрач,

да затулим излишните спомени,

скрили в себе си всеки наш плач.

Да се влюбя във тебе безпаметно,

не от виното, просто така...

И да зная, че даже след зимата,

ти ще пазиш за мен любовта.

А в камината огънят пръска

малки, жълти, искрящи звезди.

Открадни си от моите устни...

потопи се във мойте очи...

Искам някъде теб да те има...

Та дори и през триста морета.

В една зима... Някъде там...

И дълбоко, дълбоко в сърцето ми.

- caribiana”
― caribiana

“re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.

[From the preface to Leaves Grass]”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual. I love her, and I must make her love me. I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain. ”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“We found so much to say, to share, to learn.... For it wasn't just the Marquis de Sade profile and the sporty thighs-and-calves that seduced me. It was even more, perhaps, or certainly just as much, the speed at which you used to read, and still do.”
― Julia Kristeva

“Long after midnight the towers and spires of Princeton were visible, with here and there a late-burning light – and suddenly out of the clear darkness the sound of bells. As an endless dream it went on; the spirit of the past brooding over a new generation, the chosen youth from the muddled, unchastened world, still fed romantically on the mistakes and half-forgotten dreams of dead statesmen and poets. Here was a new generation, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds, through a reverie of long days and nights, destined finally to go out into the dirty grey turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all God’s dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken…”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

“So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years-
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres-
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholy new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate - but there is no competition -
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“Alle Reisen haben eine heimliche Bestimmung, die der Reisende nicht ahnt.”
― Nicolas Barreau

“Paris ist immer eine gute Idee, hatte seine Mutter gesagt. Egal, ob du glücklich oder unglücklich bist, egal, ob du verliebt bist oder nicht. Wenn du unglücklich bist oder nicht verliebt, kann Paris sogar eine sehr gute Idee sein.”
― Nicolas Barreau, París es siempre una buena idea

“-Hören Sie genau zu, ich werde es nur einmal sagen. - Mit Grabestimme flüstere ich ins Telefon. - Ich organisiere eine Überraschungsparty für Lukes Geburtstag. Die Sache ist streng geheim, und Sie sind der siebte Mensch auf der Welt, der davon erfährt.

Fast möchte ich hinzufügen: `Und jetzt muss ich Sie erschießen.´”
― Sophie Kinsella, Mini Shopaholic

“It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“I love mankind, he said, "but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“A BIRTHDAY

Something continues and I don't know what to call it
though the language is full of suggestions
in the way of language
but they are all anonymous
and it's almost your birthday music next to my bones

these nights we hear the horses running in the rain
it stops and the moon comes out and we are still here
the leaks in the roof go on dripping after the rain has passed
smell of ginger flowers slips through the dark house
down near the sea the slow heart of the beacon flashes

the long way to you is still tied to me but it brought me to you
I keep wanting to give you what is already yours
it is the morning of the mornings together
breath of summer oh my found one
the sleep in the same current and each waking to you

when I open my eyes you are what I wanted to see.”
― W.S. Merwin

“Man is never so authentically himself than when at play.”
― Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man

“When the mechanic has to mend a watch he lets the wheels run out; but the living watchworks of the state have to be repaired while they act, and a wheel has to be exchanged for another during its revolutions.”
― Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man

“Hah! Avocados,’ he said, brightening. ‘How I love them. Cheer up, my little avocado,’ he said to me pinching my hand. ‘You know, these American girls are just like avocados. What do you think, am I right, Max? Who ever even heard of an avocado sixty years ago? Yes, that’s what we’re growing nowadays’. His avocado arrived and he looked at t lovingly. ‘The typical American girl,’ he said, addressing it. ‘ A hard center with the tender meat all wrapped up in a shiny casting.’ He began to eating it. ‘How I love them’ he murmured greedily. ‘So green - so eternally green.”
― Elaine Dundy

“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”
― Emily Dickinson, Selected Letters

“Pardon My Sanity In A World Insane”
― Emily Dickinson

“Beauty is not caused. It is.”
― Emily Dickinson

“Bring me the sunset in a cup.”
― Emily Dickinson