Martin Svoboda favourite quotes (page 9)

“Write hard and clear about what hurts.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

“There are cases in which the greatest daring is the greatest wisdom.”

Carl von Clausewitz book On War

Variant: There are times when the utmost daring is the height of wisdom.
Source: On War (1832), Book 2

“He who builds children palaces tears down prison walls.”

Julius Tandler (1869–1936) Austrian physician & politician

“A man is never as big as when he is on his knees to help a child.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Variant: I love you as one loves certain dark things, secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
Source: 100 Love Sonnets

“If a poem hasn't ripped apart your soul; you haven't experienced poetry.”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

“Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Opium (1929)

“To lead an orchestra, you must turn your back on the crowd”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

“I have not told half of what I saw.”

Marco Polo (1254–1324) Venetian explorer and merchant noted for travel to central and eastern Asia

Non ho scritto neppure la metà delle cose che ho visto.
On his death-bed, when urged to retract "some of the seemingly incredible statements he made in his book", as quoted in The travels of Marco Polo, the Venetian (J. M. Dent, 1926), p. xxiv. Quote in Italian from Imago mundi seu Chronica (c. 1330) by Jacopo d'Acqui, as reported in the bibliographic note to Marco Polo: Storia del mercante che capì la Cina (2009) by Vito Bianchi.