Quotes

Every life has its kernel, its hub, its epicentre, from which everything flows out, to which everything returns.

Hamnet

She has been the mother on the pallet, too many times, the woman trying to hold on, to keep a grip on her child. All in vain. What is given may be taken away, at any time. Cruelty and devastation wait for you around corners, inside coffers, behind doors: they can leap out at you any moment, like a thief or a brigand. The trick is never to let down your guard. Never think you are safe. Never take for granted that your children’s hearts beat, that they sup milk, that they draw breath, that they walk and speak and smile and argue and play. Never for a moment forget that they may be gone, snatched from you, in the blink of an eye, borne away from you like thistledown.

Hamnet

It is like asking the heart to live without the lungs, like tearing the moon out of the sky and asking the stars to do the work, like expecting the barley to grow without rain.

Hamnet

There is not enough life, enough air, enough blood for both of them.

Hamnet

Anyone who describes dying as ‘slipping away’ or ‘peaceful’ has never witnessed it happen. Death is violent, death is a struggle. The body clings to life, as ivy to a wall, and will not easily let go, will not surrender its grip without a fight.

Hamnet

You see, she says to him, you cannot change what you are given, cannot bend or alter what is dealt to you.

Hamnet

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

The Bell Jar

I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.

The Bell Jar

If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.

The Bell Jar

I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy.”

The Bell Jar

The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence.

The Bell Jar

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my eyes and all is born again.

The Bell Jar

To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream.

The Bell Jar

I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.

The Bell Jar

The floor seemed wonderfully solid. It was comforting to know I had fallen and could fall no farther.

The Bell Jar

I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow, the million moving shapes and cul-de-sacs of shadow. There was shadow in bureau drawers and closets and suitcases, and shadow under houses and trees and stones, and shadow at the back of people's eyes and smiles, and shadow, miles and miles and miles of it, on the night side of the earth.”

The Bell Jar

But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defensless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get.

The Bell Jar

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.

Silent Spring

In nature nothing exists alone.

Silent Spring

We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road — the one less traveled by — offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.

Silent Spring

Nature has introduced great variety into the landscape, but man has displayed a passion for simplifying it. Thus he undoes the built-in checks and balances by which nature holds the species within bounds.

Silent Spring

It is also an era dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged.

Silent Spring

Life is a miracle beyond our comprehension, and we should reverence it even where we have to struggle against it. . . .

Silent Spring

To have risked so much in our efforts to mold nature to our satisfaction and yet to have failed in achieving our goal would indeed be the final irony. Yet this, it seems, is our situation.

Silent Spring

When the public protests. confronted with some obvious evidence of damaging results of pesticide applications, it is fed little tranquilizers pills of half truth.

Silent Spring

I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively instead of skeptically and dictatorially. E. B. WHITE

Silent Spring

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Dune

The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.

Dune

Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.

Dune

There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.

Dune

What do you despise? By this are you truly known.

Dune

It is so shocking to find out how many people do not believe that they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult.

Dune

It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future.

God Emperor of Dune

The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.

Dune

The mind can go either direction under stress—toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyperconsciousness at the positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training.

Dune

A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.

Dune

Survival is the ability to swim in strange water.

Dune

Try looking into that place where you dare not look! You'll find me there, staring out at you!

Dune

“Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife - chopping off what's incomplete and saying: 'Now, it's complete because it's ended here.'

- from "Collected Sayings of Maud'Dib'' by the Princess Irulan”

Dune

Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test that it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.

Dune

The slow knife penetrates the shield.

Dune

“Here lies a toppled god.
His fall was not a small one.
We did but build his pedestal,
A narrow and a tall one.”

Dune Messiah

The flesh surrenders itself. Eternity takes back its own. Our bodies stirred these waters briefly, danced with a certain intoxication before the love of life and self, dealt with a few strange ideas, then submitted to the instruments of Time. What can we say of this? I occurred. I am not...yet, I occurred.

Dune Messiah

They are not mad. They're trained to believe, not to know. Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.

Dune Messiah

Reason is the first victim of strong emotion.

Dune Messiah

The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: "I feed on your energy.”

Dune Messiah

“Constitutions become the ultimate tyranny," Paul said. "They’re organized power on such a scale as to be overwhelming. The constitution is social power mobilized and it has no conscience. It can crush the highest and the lowest, removing all dignity and individuality. It has an unstable balance point and no limitations.”

Dune Messiah

You do not beg the sun for mercy.

Dune Messiah

The wise man molds himself—the fool lives only to die.

Dune Messiah

I don't speak, I operate a machine called language. It creaks and groans, but is mine own.

Dune Messiah

“I didn't want to be different.
I wanted to be able to laugh
But I'm sister to an Emperor who's worshiped as a god. People fear me. I never wanted to be feared.
I don't want to be part of history, I just want to be loved . . . and to love.”

Dune Messiah

A creature who has spent his life creating one particular representation of his selfdom will die rather than become the antithesis of that representation

Dune Messiah

And loyalty is a valued commodity. It can be sold . . . not bought, but sold.

Dune Messiah

There are many degrees of sight and many degrees of blindness. What senses do we lack that we cannot see another world all around us?

Dune Messiah

I told him that to endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe.

Dune Messiah

There are problems in this universe for which there are no answers. Nothing. Nothing can be done.

Dune Messiah

Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class - whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.

Children of Dune

The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion.

Children of Dune

The child who refuses to travel in the father's harness, this is the symbol of man's most unique capability. "I do not have to be what my father was. I do not have to obey my father's rules or even believe everything he believed. It is my strength as a human that I can make my own choices of what to believe and what not to believe, of what to be and what not to be.

Children of Dune

The purpose of argument is to change the nature of truth.

Children of Dune

When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.

Children of Dune

The future remains uncertain and so it should, for it is the canvas upon which we paint our desires. Thus always the human condition faces a beautifully empty canvas. We possess only this moment in which to dedicate ourselves continuously to the sacred presence which we share and create.

Children of Dune

Good governance never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders.

Children of Dune

One learns from books and example only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things.

Children of Dune

To know a thing well, know its limits; Only when pushed beyond its tolerance will its true nature be seen.
-The Amtal Rule

Children of Dune

Most deadly errors arise from obsolete assumptions.

Children of Dune

You aren't thinking or really existing unless you're willing to risk even your own sanity in the judgement of your existence.

Children of Dune

If you focus your awareness only upon your own rightness, then you invite the forces of opposition to overwhelm you.

Children of Dune

If all those around you believe some particular thing, you will soon be tempted to share in that belief.

Children of Dune

If you put away those who report accurately, you’ll keep only those who know what you want to hear. I can think of nothing more poisonous than to rot in the stink of your own reflections.

Children of Dune

The joy of living, its beauty is all bound up in the fact that life can surprise you.

Children of Dune

It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.

2001 A Space Odyssey

He was only aware of the conflict that was slowly destroying his integrity—the conflict between truth, and concealment of truth.

2001 A Space Odyssey

A hundred failures would not matter, when one single success could change the destiny of the world.

2001 A Space Odyssey

He thought back on his family with deep emotion and love. His conviction that he would have to disappear was, if possible, even firmer than his sister's. He remained in this state of empty and peaceful reflection until the tower clock struck three in the morning. He still saw that outside the window everything was beginning to grow light. Then, without his consent, his head sank down to the floor, and from his nostrils streamed his last weak breath.

The Metamorphosis

I only fear danger where I want to fear it.

The Metamorphosis

And so gentlemen, I learned. Oh, if you have to learn, you learn; if you’re desperate for a way out, you learn; you learn pitilessly. You stand over yourself with a whip in your hand; if there’s the least resistance, you lash yourself.

The Metamorphosis

A man might find for a moment that he was unable to work, but that's exactly the right time to remember his past accomplishments and to consider that later on, when the obstacles has been removed, he's bound to work all the harder and more efficiently.

The Metamorphosis

I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.

The Metamorphosis

The truth always carries the ambiguity of the words used to express it.

God Emperor of Dune

This wise man observed that wealth is a tool of freedom. But the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery.

God Emperor of Dune

Most men go through life unchallenged, except at the final moment.

God Emperor of Dune

Police are inevitably corrupted. ... Police always observe that criminals prosper. It takes a pretty dull policeman to miss the fact that the position of authority is the most prosperous criminal position available.

God Emperor of Dune

Most believe that a satisfactory future requires a return to an idealized past, a past which never in fact existed.

God Emperor of Dune

Caution is the path to mediocrity. Gliding, passionless mediocrity is all that most people think they can achieve.

God Emperor of Dune

“For what do you hunger, Lord?” Moneo ventured.
“For a humankind which can make truly long-term decisions.”

God Emperor of Dune

Privilege becomes arrogance. Arrogance promotes injustice. The seeds of ruin blossom.

God Emperor of Dune

It's very difficult convincing the young of anything. They're born knowing so much.

God Emperor of Dune

Why is it that foolishness repeats itself with such monotonous precision?

God Emperor of Dune

Each of us comes into being knowing who he is and what he is supposed to do.' ... 'Small children know,' Leto said. 'It's only after adults have confused them that children hide this knowledge even from themselves.

God Emperor of Dune

Technology breeds anarchy. It distributes these tools at random. And with the, goes the provocation for violence. The ability to make and use savage destroyers falls inevitably into the hands of smaller and smaller groups until at last the group is a single individual.

God Emperor of Dune

Mischief is a most profound pleasure. It’s in the ways we deal with mischief that we sharpen creativity.

God Emperor of Dune

Time runs out for any finite observer. There are no closed systems. Even I only stretch the finite matrix.

God Emperor of Dune

I am pregnant with my Empire. I’ll die giving birth to it.

God Emperor of Dune

Siaynoq means giving honour to one who speaks with sincerity. It signifies the remembrance of things which are spoken with sincerity.

God Emperor of Dune

Membership in a conspiracy, as in an army, frees people from the sense of personal responsibility.

God Emperor of Dune