All Quotes

"Κάλλος γὰρ περίπυστον ἀμωμήτοιο γυναικὸς ὀξύτερον μερόπεσσι πέλει πτερόεντος ὀιστοῦ· ὀφθαλμὸς δ᾿ ὁδός ἐστιν."

"Παρθενικῆς δὲ πειθομένης ποτὶ λέκτρον ὑπόσχεσίς ἐστι σιωπή."

"Ἤδη καὶ γλυκύπικρον ἐδέξατο κέντρον Ἐρώτων."

"[singing] Oh Colombus is the discoverer of America, As we sail the sea in fourteen-ninety-two, And the good Queen Isabella, Gave her jewels to her fella, So Colombus could sail 'cross the ocean blue!"

"[Last lines] Ok, Chris...you can have the credit. Heh... No use changing all the history books just for little 'ol me! [laughs]"

"[last lines] I sure hope Petrillo doesn't hear about this."

"Like Freud and Jung and Rudolf Otto, all of whom contributed deep strands to his work, Eliade argued boldly for universals where he might more safely have argued for widely prevalent patterns. Yet many of the patterns that he identified in religions that spanned the entire globe and the whole of human history — a span that no one has ever known as well as he did — inspired an entire generation of both scholars and amateurs of the study of religion, and they still prove useful as starting points for the comparative study of religion and still hold water even after the challenges posed by new data to which Eliade did not have access. His concept of hierophany, the sudden irruption of the sacred in the profane world, sacred time opening to the transcendent, resulting in radical discontinuities, has proved a far more widely applicable and heuristic term than the older, narrower term "theophany," denoting the manifestation of a god."

"[Jesus says to John the Baptist:] It becomes me to be baptized with this baptism for the present, and afterwards to bestow the baptism of the consubstantial Trinity upon all men. ... Baptize me, who am destined to baptize those who believe in me with water, and with the Spirit, and with fire: with water, capable of washing away the defilement of sins; with the Spirit, capable of making the earthly spiritual; with fire, naturally fitted to consume the thorns of transgressions. (Hebrews 6:8)"

"In antiquity, the revelation of a new religious insight or system was not described in terms of human inspiration or innovation but rather as a divine revelation associated with a theophany. The theophany was the typical motif used to explain the origin of something new and meaningful. But something new can only become meaningful if it is also expressed and described in terms and analogies that are already well-known to everyone concerned. Despite its religious novelty, the Sinai covenant Moses delivered was readily intelligible to these ex-slaves because it employed well-known concepts and images, in this case concepts and images drawn from the familiar world of Late Bronze Age international politics. Naturally, they were adapted so that they now served religious as opposed to political ends, providing a basis for a community whose cohesion did not require any political enforcement mechanism or monopoly of force."

"Yet, man cannot fully forget his inner being, his theomorphic nature, for however hard he tries to float on the surface of his being and run away from the Centre, he carries the Centre within him and sooner or later the Centre manifests itself in one way or another in the periphery and the surface. For to be made in the image of God in the sense of being the theophany of His Names and Qualities is a reality that lies in the human state itself. Islam affirms the primordial character of man's theomorphic nature and his special situation in the cosmos and vis-à-vis God by referring to a covenant made between God and man even before the creation of the world. For as the Quran states: "And (remember) when thy Lord brought forth from the Children of Adam, from their reins, their seed, and made them testify of themselves, (saying): Am I not your Lord? They said: Yea, verily." (VII; 172). In this yea is to be found the secret of human destiny because by iterating it man accepted the burden of trust (amanah) which none in creation but he dared accept. "Lo! We offered the trust unto the heavens and the earth and the hills, but they shrank from hearing it and were afraid of it. And man assumed it." (XXXIII; 72)."

"There is nothing [...] that can be said with greater certainty about these gods than the fact that they, indifferent to any happiness or pain in the world, live in the fullest bliss. Precisely this character brings us closest to the divinity of the Olympians. And precisely this spirit of celestial intangibility and silent bliss is what still breathes so happily and freely from the figures of the Greek gods today."

"Democracy is a great spiritual force evolving itself from men, utilizing each, completing his incompleteness by weaving together all in the many-membered community life which is the true Theophany. The world today is growing more spiritual, and I say this not in spite of the Great War, but because of all this war has shown us of the inner forces bursting forth in fuller and fuller expression."

"All pantheism must ultimately be shipwrecked on the inescapable demands of ethics, and then on the evil and suffering of the world. If the world is a theophany, then everything done by man, and even by animal, is equally divine and excellent; nothing can be more censurable and nothing more praiseworthy than anything else; hence there is no ethics."

"But his illness never attained the merciful degree of severity that would have entitled him to a spell in a lunatic asylum and absolve him from further work. It wasn’t quite severe enough for a lunatic; only for a writer."

"It has been said that man is a rational animal; while this formulation is insufficient and ill-sounding, it nonetheless points to an undeniable truth, though in an elliptical fashion, for the rational faculty actually serves to underscore the transcendence of man in relation to the animal. Man is rational because he possesses the Intellect, which by definition has a capacity for the absolute and therefore a sense of the relative; and he possesses the Intellect because he is made "in the image of God", which, moreover, he demonstrates physically by his corporeal form and his cranial form, as well as by his vertical posture, then by language and his productive capacity. Man is a theophany in his form as much as in his faculties."

"Tustari states in regards to Surah An-Najm verse 18 "Verily he saw some of the greatest signs of his Lord.That is, those of His attributes that became manifest through His signs. Though he saw them, he did not let slip [his gaze] from his witnessed Object (mashhūd) [of worship], and did not withdraw from the vicinity of his worshipped Object (maʿbūd), but rather [what he saw] only increased him in love (maḥabba), longing (shawq) and strength (quwwa).God gave him the strength by which he could bear the theophany (tajallī) and supreme lights (anwār ʿaẓīma). This was out of his being favoured above the other prophets. Do you not see how Moses fell down in a swoon at the theophany. Yet twice as much did the Prophet ﷺ penetrate it (jābahu) in his contemplation, through a face-to-face encounter with the sight of his heart (kifāḥan bi-baṣar qalbihi), and yet remained firm due to the strength of his state, and his elevated station (maqām) and rank (daraja). His words, Exalted is He:""

"I]n the theophanies of Ezk.8.2, Rev.4.3, two different tints are alluded to (a bright white and a glowing red), which have been thought to suggest the two aspects of God's moral nature, light and fire, mercy and justice; or love in its two aspects of pardon and correction. ...[T]he colours of the Bible convey in many cases more than the literal meaning..."

"It’s not a story for people with thin skins and weak nerves, whom I would advise to replace this book on the pile at once and slink off to the children’s section. Shoo! Be gone, you cry-babies and quaffers of chamomile tea, you wimps and softies! This book tells of a place where reading is still a genuine adventure, and by adventure I mean the old-fashion definition of the word that appears in the Zamonian dictionary: ‘A daring enterprise undertaken in a spirit of curiosity or temerity, it is potentially life-threatening, harbours unforeseeable dangers and sometimes proves fatal.’ Yes, I speak of a place where reading can drive people insane. Where books may injure and poison them – indeed, even kill them. Only those who are thoroughly prepared to take such risks in order to read this book – only those willing to hazard their lives in so doing – should accompany me to the next paragraph. The remainder I congratulate on their wise but yellow-bellied decision to stay behind. Farewell, you cowards! I wish you a long and boring life, and, on that note, bid you goodbye!"

"In my profession it isn’t a question of telling good literature from bad. Really good literature is seldom appreciated in its own day. The best authors die poor, the bad ones make money – it’s always been like that. What do I, an agent, get out of a literary genius who won’t be discovered for another hundred years? I’ll be dead myself then. Successful incompetents are what I need."

"I now understood the secret of music and knew what makes it so infinitely superior to all the other arts: its incorporeality. Once it has left an instrument it becomes its own master, a free and independent creature of sound, weightless, incorporeal and perfectly in tune with the universe."

"In my position I simply can’t afford pangs of conscience. Fortunately, they fade the more power one acquires. It’s an entirely natural process."

"You probably suppose that what you heard last night was music. Allow me to correct you: it was acoustic alchemy, hypnosis by means of sound waves. Music is the least resistible of all the arts, so I simply had to make use of it. Try getting an audience to dance by reciting a poem! Try getting them to march! Impossible! Only music can do that."

"It symbolizes the three components of power: power, power and power."

"“How can the answer to today’s questions be in such an old book?” “The answers to almost all of today’s questions can be found in old books,” Smyke retorted. “If you want to find out, look them up. If not, forget it.”"

"In the end, because you become inured to anything you meet in vast numbers, I grew accustomed to the sight of these innumerable skeletons. I ceased to flinch whenever I rounded a bend in a tunnel and was confronted by a skeletal figure with its arm raised in salutation. There was even something comforting about this world of the dead, because the absence of life betokened the absence of danger. All that is evil stems from the living; the dead are a peaceable bunch."

"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written, that’s all."

"Yes, yes, but why was it invisible, like everything you had to take on trust? Because it didn’t exist at all?"

"Reading is an intelligent way of not having to think."

"Writing is a desperate attempt to extract some dignity – and a modicum of money – from solitude."

"Curiosity is the most powerful incentive in the world. Why? Because it’s capable of overcoming the two most powerful disincentives in the world: common sense and fear."

"I chewed them as I looked round the room, feeling thoroughly restored. A drink of water and a handful of smoked maggots had sufficed to turn a despairing wreck into a cheerful optimist. It isn’t the brain that governs our state of mind, it’s in the stomach."

"It was too hard to be a feminist artist on your own; the criticism was too great to bear."

"The problem is this: in order to make money – lots of money – we don’t need flawless literary masterpieces. What we need is mediocre rubbish, trash suitable for mass consumption. More and more, bigger and bigger blockbusters of less and less significance. What counts is the paper we sell, not the words that are printed on it."

"“No, literature isn’t eternal,” he cried. “It’s a thing of the moment. Even if you made books with pages of steel and diamond letters, they would some day crash into the sun and melt, together with our planet. Nothing is eternal, least of all in art. It doesn’t matter how long an author’s work continues to glimmer after his death. What matters is how brightly it burns while he’s still alive.”"

"“Regenschein is dead, my friend. You’re delirious.” “No one who writes a good book is really dead.”"

"One’s memory functions like a spider’s web. Unimportant things – the wind, for example – a web lets through, whereas captured flies become lodged in it and are stored there until the spider needs and devours them."

"This was nonsense, of course, but he lectured so brilliantly and plausibly that I could only marvel at his inexhaustible ingenuity."

"His unorthodox didactic method of imparting his monumental store of knowledge was a curious mixture of megalomania and modesty, because he claimed to have picked it up from others. The truth was, he had invented it all himself and never tired, day after day and lesson after lesson, of devising new absurdities that would fire my imagination."

"I’m not much of an expert on entomology because most insects fill me with a revulsion in proportionate to the number of legs they possess."

"Many people may think it is insane of someone endowed with such a potential abundance of power to spend his life producing works of art which no one can see. Well, my own ideas of morality prescribe that only a lunatic would aspire to subordinate the fate of others to his own wishes. I leave it to a higher authority to decide which view is the right one."

"[Africans] are not the possessors of an old civilization and ancient laws, under which they have learned to manage their own affairs; they are in no degree in the position of the Hindoo and Mahomedan races in India. They are mere barbarians, with some ill-defined customs which we have reduced to law.… African tribes seem to be mere casual aggregations of people under the chief of the day. … I should judge, then, that there is little of native law or rule which we are much called on to respect when these people come under our jurisdiction."

"It’s hard because I’ve been through a lot. A lot has happened in my life and it’s not easy. Everything, when you start, it’s not really easy but I accepted that it’s not easy. So, when I accepted it, the process became easier, that’s how it is. I’m enjoying [the process]."

"I realized the value of taking a rest. Rest is a must. You don’t have to push yourself to the limit everyday. I also realized that we have to think about our decisions more carefully. Not only my life is at stake, but also others as well."

"I am still an artist and a singer. But even if I'm not, I'll still go bald. I just want to say that whatever your choice is, you are still beautiful inside and out."

"Tomás de Torquemada, the 15th‑century Dominican friar, has long been the poster child of the Spanish Inquisition. His name became shorthand for the cruelty of a system that hunted “heretics” with a zeal that burned more than bodies—it burned the boundaries of conscience. Modern historians such as Henry Kamen have dismantled the Enlightenment caricature of Torquemada as a crude, uneducated bureaucrat. He was, in fact, intelligent, well‑read, and utterly convinced he was serving God. That, precisely, made him dangerous. The Catholic Church would later apologize for the excesses committed under his watch."

"We have already won, because we never lost who we are."

"In every step of this journey, we chose integrity over shortcuts, truth over convenience, and compassion over division. We stood firm in our principles, spoke up for what we believed in, and remained grounded in purpose."

"This was never just about a position, it was about proving that dignity, honesty, and heart still have a place in public service. Thank you for walking with me."

"“I’m fine. I’m happy. I’ve always dreamt about being a mom. I don’t know if it’s weird but it’s really one of my dreams.""

"I had no idea how to do it. I really didn’t like it because the first day I took a pretty hard fall and that just set a bad tone for the entire journey."