“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)
Recommended quotes page 88
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
“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
“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
“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
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.
“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
“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.
“If they give you lined paper, write the other way.”
William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet
“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
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.
John Ashbery (1927–2017) poet from the United States
Source: The Paris Review (Issue 90, Winter 1983)
“If you dislike change, you're going to dislike irrelevance even more.”
Eric Shinseki (1942) retired United States Army four-star general, seventh United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Quoted in Mackubin Thomas Owens, "Marines Turned Soldiers", National Review Online, December 10, 2001
Morrissey (1959) English singer
The Interview https://www.morrisseycentral.com/messagesfrommorrissey/234417-the-interview, June 24 2019, morrisseycentral.com <br class="br">About the Notre Dame fire
Morrissey (1959) English singer
From "My gilded prison", interview by J. C. Panek, L'Indic magazine https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'Indic_magazine (November 1997). <br class="br">In interviews etc., About love
“I say a lot of things I don’t mean.”
Morrissey (1959) English singer
interview by Andrew Harrison, Word Magazine (June 2003)
In interviews etc., About interviews