Quotes

Torquato Tasso photo

“Woman, a thing changeable in nature,
more than whistles in the wind and more than the tip
of a supple stalk of wheat.”

Femina, cosa mobil per natura,
Più che fraschetta al vento, e più che cima
Di pieghevole spica.
Act I, scene ii. Compare: "Varium et mutabile semper femina", Virgil, Aeneid, 4.569.
Aminta (1573)

Nâzım Hikmet photo

“Separation isn't time or distance
it's the bridge between us
finer than silk thread sharper than swords”

Nâzım Hikmet (1902–1963) Turkish poet

From Separation (6 June 1960)

“Trying to be better than someone else is a pure waste of time. Strive to be better than you were yesterday.”

Eric Stanley on CBS News https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksYrWGivy5A
2011

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali photo
Peter Gabriel photo
Raymond Chandler photo
Gustave Flaubert photo
Laurell K. Hamilton photo

“They be crazier than we are.”

Source: Blue Moon

Cassandra Clare photo

“There is more to living than”

Source: Clockwork Princess

Charles II of England photo

“Better than a play!”

Charles II of England (1630–1685) King of England, Ireland and Scotland

On the House of Lords' debate on Lord Ross's Divorce Bill (1610), as quoted in King Charles the Second (1931) by Arthur Bryant

Paul Karl Feyerabend photo
Muhammad photo
Zora Neale Hurston photo
Charlaine Harris photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
David Lynch photo
James Baldwin photo

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

As quoted in "Doom and glory of knowing who you are" by Jane Howard, in LIFE magazine, Vol. 54, No. 21 (24 May 1963), p. 89 https://books.google.com/books?id=mEkEAAAAMBAJ; a part of this statement has often been quoted as it was paraphrased in The New York Times (1 June 1964):
Context: You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people. An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are. He has to tell, because nobody else can tell, what it is like to be alive.

Sarah McLachlan photo
Steven Erikson photo