“How unhappy does one have to be before living seems worse than dying?”
Deborah Curtis book Touching from a Distance
Source: Touching from a Distance: Ian Curtis and Joy Division
“It is easier to seem worthy of positions one does not have than of those one does.”
Il est plus facile de paraître digne des emplois qu'on n'a pas que de ceux que l'on exerce.
Maxim 164.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)
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Do you have more details about the quote "It is easier to seem worthy of positions one does not have than of those one does." by François de La Rochefoucauld?
François de La Rochefoucauld156
French author of maxims and memoirs 1613–1680Related quotes
“And it always seems to stick in one's mind more than reality does.”
Terry Gilliam (1940) American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe
As quoted in "Terry Gilliam reflects to Dreams about the making of Dr Parnassus" by Phil Stubbs http://www.smart.co.uk/dreams/parntgrf.htm <br class="br">Context: We read Dover Books, because you can steal from them. The medieval imagery and iconography is so good for the imagination. Trying to describe the world, trying to describe the cosmos, trying to put it down in neat orderly fashion, unlike reality. And it always seems to stick in one's mind more than reality does.
“He that works and does some Poem, not he that merely says one, is worthy of the name of Poet.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher
Introduction to Cromwell's Letters and Speeches (1845).
1840s
Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher
Source: The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism
Czeslaw Milosz book The Captive Mind
The Captive Mind (1953)
Context: Human material seems to have one major defect: it does not like to be considered merely as human material. It finds it hard to endure the feeling that it must resign itself to passive acceptance of changes introduced from above.
“…the future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.”
W. Somerset Maugham book The Summing Up
Source: The Summing Up (1938), p. 51
“Not using faults does not mean one does not have them.”
Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet
Voces (1943)
Robertson Davies book The Cunning Man
Part 2, section 6.
The Cunning Man (1994)
Context: The ironist is not bitter, he does not seek to undercut everything that seems worthy or serious, he scorns the cheap scoring-off of the wisecracker. He stands, so to speak, somewhat at one side, observes and speaks with a moderation which is occasionally embellished with a flash of controlled exaggeration. He speaks from a certain depth, and thus he is not of the same nature as the wit, who so often speaks from the tongue and no deeper. The wit's desire is to be funny; the ironist is only funny as a secondary achievement.
