“To be lost in spiritlessness is the most terrible thing of all.”
Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism
“The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.”
Letter to Charles Eliot Norton (6 April 1903)
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William Dean Howells18
author, critic and playwright from the United States 1837–1920Related quotes
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“Love--the most wonderful and most terrible thing in the world.”
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Source: Gabriela, Clavo y Canela
“The total depravity of inanimate things.”
Mary Abigail Dodge (1833–1896) American writer
Epigram, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“All the Good of mortals is mortal.”
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Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XCVIII: On the Fickleness of Fortune
“All men are mortal. Socrates was mortal. Therefore, all men are Socrates.”
Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician
Love and Death (1975)
Context: If I don't kill him he'll make war all through Europe. But murder... the most foul of all crimes. What would Socrates say? All those Greeks were homosexuals. Boy, they must have had some wild parties. I bet they all took a house together in Crete for the summer. A: Socrates is a man. B: All men are mortal. C: All men are Socrates. That means all men are homosexuals. Heh... I'm not a homosexual. Once, some cossacks whistled at me. I happen to have the kind of body that excites both persuasions. You know, some men are heterosexual and some men are bisexual and some men don't think about sex at all, you know... they become lawyers.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Maxims