Recommended quotes | Quotes of famous people

“If even a single hair of my beard learns my secret, I will cut my beard from the root.”

Mehmed II (1432–1481) Ottoman sultan

Source: Freely, John (The Grand Turk)

Secret , Learning

“I know about your [British] system of democracy, but in that system the workers 'hold keys of straw', as an expression of ours puts it. It is democracy for the capitalists, for the lords, but not for the workers. When we win we shall establish democracy, but not like that democracy of yours. In our country there will be democracy only for the people, while the 'keys of straw' will be in the hands of the beys, aghas and the bajraktars who have always opressed and betrayed the people.”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

Writings, The Artful Albanian

People , Democracy , Country

“Friends: not one. Just a few acquaintances who imagine they feel something for me and who might be sorry if a train ran over me and the funeral was on a rainy day.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Feeling , Imagination , Training

“No intelligent idea can gain general acceptance unless some stupidity is mixed in with it.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Não há nenhuma ideia inteligente que possa ganhar aceitação geral sem ser misturada antes com um pouco de estupidez.
The Book of Disquietude, trans. Richard Zenith, text 104

Stupidity , Intelligence , Idea

“I'd woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Time

“Everything interests me, but nothing holds me.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

“To know nothing about yourself is to live. To know yourself badly is to think.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Thinking

“I'm nothing,
I'll always be nothing.
I can't even wish to be something.
Aside from that, I've got all the world's dreams inside me.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Não sou nada.
Nunca serei nada.
Não posso querer ser nada.
À parte isso, tenho em mim todos os sonhos do mundo.
Álvaro de Campos (heteronym), Tabacaria ["The Tobacconist's" or "The Tobacco Shop"] (15 January 1928)
Variant translations:
I am nothing.
Never shall be anything.
Cannot will to be anything.
This apart, I have in me all the dreams of the world.
trans. Jonathan Griffin, in Selected Poems (Penguin Books, 1974), p. 111
I am not nothing.
I will never be nothing.
I cannot ever want to be nothing.
Apart from that, I have in me all the dreams of the world.
In Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations (2005), p. 649
I am nothing.
I shall never be anything.
I cannot even wish to be anything.
Apart from this, I have within me all the dreams of the world.
Variant: I am nothing.
I will never be anything.
I cannot wish to be anything.
Bar that, I have in me all the dreams of the world.

World , Dreams

“Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

A literatura é a maneira mais agradável de ignorar a vida.
Variant: To write is to forget. Literature is the pleasantest way of ignoring life.
Source: The Book of Disquietude, trans. Richard Zenith, text 116

Life , Way , Literature

“In order to understand, I destroyed myself.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

A Factless Autobiography, Richard Zenith Edition, Lisbon, 2006, p. 73
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Para compreender, destruí-me.

Understanding

“My mama always used to tell me: 'If you can't find somethin' to live for, you best find somethin' to die for.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Variant: My Mama used to tell me if u can’t find something to live for, you best find something to die for.
Source: Resurrection, 1971-1996

“They laugh at me because I'm different; I laugh at them because they're all the same.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

“I'm not perfect. But I'll always be real.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Perfection

“I am a hard person to love but when I love, I love really hard.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Love , Personality

“The first true love is always the last one.”

Andrzej Majewski (1966) Polish writer and photographer

Aphorisms. Magnum in Parvo (2000)

Love

“If they give you lined paper, write the other way.”

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet

Motivational , Back To Work , Way

“Do not believe your thoughts, neither when they tell you that you are terrible, nor when they tell you that you are a saint.”

Paisios of Mount Athos (1924–1994) Greek Eastern Orthodox monk

“Stop quoting laws, we carry weapons!”

Pompey (-106–-48 BC) Roman general

“Οὐ παύσεσθε,” εἶπεν, “ἡμῖν ὑπεζωσμένοις ξίφη νόμους ἀναγινώσκοντες;” Plutarch, Lives. Pompey 10.3.2. To the Mamertines in Messana, complaining about Pompey's legal jurisdiction after their city was retaken during the civil warfare. Lit.: "'Will you not give up,' he said, 'reading laws to us men girt with swords?'"
Life of Pompey

Law , Quotes

“Outside is pure energy and colorless substance. All of the rest happens through the mechanism of our senses.”

Albert Hofmann (1906–2008) Swiss chemist

As quoted in "Nearly 100, LSD's Father Ponders His 'Problem Child'" (7 January 2006)
Context: Outside is pure energy and colorless substance. All of the rest happens through the mechanism of our senses. Our eyes see just a small fraction of the light in the world. It is a trick to make a colored world, which does not exist outside of human beings.

Sense

“It didn’t pay very much, but it enabled me to get other jobs doing art criticism, which I didn’t want to do very much, but as so often when you exhibit reluctance to do something, people think you must be very good at it. If I had set out to be an art critic, I might never have succeeded.”

John Ashbery (1927–2017) poet from the United States

Source: The Paris Review (Issue 90, Winter 1983)

People , Art , Thinking