Martin Svoboda favourite quotes (page 13)

“Poems are never finished - just abandoned”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Unsourced

“to live means to lack something at every moment”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

“War: a massacre of people who don't know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don't massacre each other.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

La guerre, c'est un massacre de gens qui ne se connaissent pas, au profit de gens qui se connaissent, mais ne se massacrent pas.
Bizarre, issues 24-31 (1962), p. 102
This apocryphal quote from Paul Valéry is never precisely sourced: neither on the internet nor in the works we have consulted. See: https://www.guichetdusavoir.org/question/voir/52650

“The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Unsourced

“The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

“Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

“Feathers shall raise men towards the heaven even as they do the birds. That is by the letters written by their quills.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XLV Prophecies

“It is an acknowledged fact that we perceive errors in the work of others more readily than in our own.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

“Better to put things at the worst at first, and reserve the best for a surprise.”

Jules Verne book The Mysterious Island

Mieux vaut mettre les choses au pis tout de suite, répondit l’ingénieur, et ne se réserver que la surprise du mieux.
Part I, ch. IX
The Mysterious Island (1874)
Context: Better to put things at the worst at first," replied the engineer, "and reserve the best for a surprise.

“Arrange whatever pieces come your way.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“What does the brain matter compared with the heart?”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

“And the poem, I think, is only your voice speaking.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves

“The extraordinary woman depends on the ordinary woman.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

"Women and Fiction"
Granite and Rainbow (1958)
Context: The extraordinary woman depends on the ordinary woman. It is only when we know what were the conditions of the average woman's life … it is only when we can measure the way of life and the experience of life made possible to the ordinary woman that we can account for the success or failure of the extraordinary woman as a writer.

“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Source: A Room of One's Own / Three Guineas

“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.”

Steven Weinberg (1933) American theoretical physicist

“Inability, human incapacity, is the only boundary to an art.”

Emile Zola (1840–1902) French writer (1840-1902)

Source: Le Naturalisme Au Theatre

“These young people naturally grow up with ideas different from ours, for they are born for times when we shall no longer be here”

Emile Zola (1840–1902) French writer (1840-1902)

Source: Work

“If people can just love each other a little bit, they can be so happy.”

Emile Zola book Germinal

Source: Germinal

“If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, I will answer you: I am here to live out loud!”

Emile Zola (1840–1902) French writer (1840-1902)

As quoted in Writers on Writing‎ (1986) by Jon Winokur.
Variant: If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud.

“Civilization will not attain perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.”

Emile Zola (1840–1902) French writer (1840-1902)

Cited as attributed to Zola in The Heretic's Handbook of Quotations : Cutting Comments on Burning Issues (1992) by Charles Bufe, p. 183, but no earlier citation has yet been located, and this appears to be very similar to remarks often attributed to Denis Diderot: "Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest" and "Let us strangle the last king with the guts of the last priest" — these are loosely derived from a statement Diderot actually did make: "his hands would plait the priest's entrails, for want of a rope, to strangle kings."
This quote appeared in soviet popular-scientific work "Satellite atheist" (Sputnik ateista) http://books.google.ru/books/about/%D0%A1%D0%BF%D1%83%D1%82%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BA_%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0.html?id=Lq9AAAAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y (1959), p. 491.
Disputed