“...now and then a giggling trail of mermaids appeared in our wake. We fed them oatmeal.”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Moominpappa's Memoirs
“I cannot stress enough the perils of your friends marrying or becoming court inventors. One day you are all a society of outlaws, adventurous comrades and companions who will be pushing off somewhere or other when things become tiresome; you have all the world to choose from, just by looking at the map… And then, suddenly, they’re not interested any more. They want to keep warm. They’re afraid of rain. They start collecting big things that can’t fit in a rucksack. They talk only of small things. They don’t like to make sudden decisions and do something contrariwise. Formerly they hoisted sail; now they carpenter little shelves for porcelain mugs.”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Moominpappa's Memoirs
“...by and by a change came: I started to muse about the shape of my nose. I put my trivial surroundings aside and mused more and more about myself, and I found this to be a bewitching occupation. I stopped asking and longed instead to speak of my thoughts and feelings. Alas, there was no one besides myself who found me interesting.”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Moominpappa's Memoirs
“Well,' said Hodgkins, 'perhaps he really is interested in everything, only he doesn't overdo it. For ourselves there is always one single interest. You want to become. I want to do. My nephew wants to have. But the Joxter just lives.'
'Simply lives,' I said. 'Anybody can do that.'
'Mphm,' Hodgkins said.”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Moominpappa's Memoirs
“We sat talking on a rock. The air was filled with the tang of sea-weed and of something else that could only have been the ocean smell. I felt so happy that I wasn't even afraid it wouldn't last.”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Moominpappa's Memoirs
“-Oletko sinä onnellinen? minä kysyin.
-Hyvältä tuntuu, mutisi Fredrikson ja katsoi hämillään merelle. (Siitä tiesin että hän oli kauhean onnellinen.)”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Moominpappa's Memoirs
“она была цельной натурой, начисто лишённой нюансов”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Moominpappa's Memoirs
“-Kylve joessa! Hiekkapohja! Ihanan pehmeä! ulvoi Fredrikson.
-Valhetta ja petosta, sanoi drontti Edvard. -Pienin tuittukin tietää, että joki on raivostuttavan täynnä kiviä!
-Eikä ole! Hiekkapohja! Fredrikson huusi.
Drontti mutisi hetken itsekseen ja sanoi lopulta:
-Hyvä on. Minä kylven siinä sinun mörönmoisessa joessasi. Siiryhän syrjään, minulla ei ole varaa kustantaa enää hautajaisia. Ja jos petät minua, senkin täinmuna, saat maksaa hautajaisesi itse!”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Moominpappa's Memoirs
“Numero 67 oli granaateilla koristettu samppanjavispilä. Lisäksi olin voittanut hainhampaan, säilötyn savurenkaan ja koristellun posetiivin kammen. Voitteko käsittää onneani!?”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Moominpappa's Memoirs
“Слово за слово, и я узнал, что племянника зовут Шнырёк и что родители его погибли во время генеральной уборки.
И вообще, как обстоит дело с вашим воспитанием? Вы воспитаны или нет? А может, вы так и родились трудновоспитуемыми?
- Каком-каком? - переспросил Фредриксон с заметным интересом.
И я очень тому обрадовался, потому что впервые услышал разумный, интеллигентный вопрос.
- Ведут порочный образ жизни? - очень заинтересовался я. - Что это значит?
- Точно не знаю. Наверно, топчут чужие огороды и пьют пиво.
- Подождите немного, - попросил Снусмумрик. - Моему папе что - нравилась эта круглая Мюмла?
- Еще бы! - отвечал Муми-папа. - Они носились повсюду вдвоем и хохотали, когда надо и не надо.
- Извините, а дикие звери здесь водятся? - спросил Шнырек.
- Гораздо хуже, - прошептала Мюмла. - Пятьсот процентов гостей бесследно исчезают! Просто жуть. Ну, я пошла. Привет!”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Moominpappa's Memoirs
“Не могу со всей силой не подчеркнуть опасность, когда кто-либо из ваших друзей возьмёт да женится или возьмёт да станет придворным изобретателем. Вот ты являешься членом Нелегальной Колонии, окружён искателями приключений, готовыми пуститься в путь, как только им взгрустнётся, и у тебя обширный выбор — вся карта мира...
...И вдруг всё это их уже не интересует. Они хотят сидеть в тепле. Они боятся дождя. Они начинают собирать всякие большие вещи, которые нельзя упаковать, и болтают о пустяках. Им слабо внезапно решиться и переиначить свою жизнь. Прежде они ставили паруса, а теперь кропают этажерки для фарфора. О, можно ли без слёз говорить о подобных вещах!”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Moominpappa's Memoirs
“По большей части мы любим приятно переменчивое и прихотливое, неожиданное и своеобразное: берег, который есть немного суши и немного воды, закат, который есть немного темноты и немного света, и весну, которая есть немного прохлады и немного тепла.”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Moominpappa's Memoirs
“Меня томило ужасное ощущение, будто великие приключения беспрестанно следуют одно за другим там, где меня нет, — грандиозные, колоритные приключения, которые никогда больше не повторяются.”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Moominpappa's Memoirs
“Myötätunnostani huolimatta en kuitenkaan pystynyt syventymään hänen ongelmiinsa - niin, kaikesta huolimatta on muutamia harvoja aloja, joilla lahjakkuuteni ei ole sitä tasoa kuin voisi odottaa, ja yksi niistä on koneoppi.”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Moominpappa's Memoirs
“Мир тогда был большой-пребольшой, а всё мелкое — маленьким на более приятный манер, чем ныне, и нравилось мне гораздо больше.”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Moominpappa's Memoirs
“Доброе утро! — сказал я. — Я одинокий беглец, родившийся под совершенно особенным расположением звёзд.”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Moominpappa's Memoirs
Tove Jansson
Born place: in Helsinki, Finland
Born date August 9, 1914
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“We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, quote from Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life
“The teaching practice is a success, largely because Mr. Sturridge seems to like me, so much so as to offer me a permanent job there in the autumn term. He tells me that the kids like me too. I’m very flattered and I thank him for the compliment, but ask for some time to consider the offer. That evening I climb up to the top of Clough Head. On the crest of the high ridge I turn back and I can see my life spread out like the valley below me: growing old like Mr. Sturridge, a village teacher, gray-headed and stooped, with worn leather patches on the elbows of my jacket, going home each night to a stone cottage on the hillside with an older Megan standing in the garden, roses in a trellis around the front door, a wood fire in the hearth, my books and my music, idealized, peaceful, devoid of complexity or worry or the vanity of ambition. Whatever is comforting about this image of a possible future, however different it is from the harsh industrial landscape of my childhood, it holds me for no more than a moment and then it is gone. I know the answer I shall give the headmaster, and as the evening draws in I make my way at a brisker pace down the mountain to my digs in the village.”
― Sting, quote from Broken Music
“but within the next ten years Rossum’s Universal Robots will produce so much wheat, so much cloth, so much everything that things will no longer have any value. Everyone will be able to take as much as he needs. There’ll be no more poverty. Yes, people will be out of work, but by then there’ll be no work left to be done. Everything will be done by living machines. People will do only what they enjoy. They will live only to perfect themselves.”
― Karel Čapek, quote from R.U.R.
“Like other mammals, they are capable of strong emotions. They have certainly committed no crimes. I do not claim to have the answer, but I think it is
certainly worthwhile to raise the question: Why, exactly, all over the civilized world, in virtually every major city, are apes in prison?”
― Carl Sagan, quote from Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence
“She leaves him sitting there, glancing back just once before she goes through the stairwell door and observing how the cloud of smoke from his cigar gets pulled in wisps out the dark gaping hole in the glass wall--as though it is his soul, too large for his massive frame and seeping out the pores of his skin and wandering circuitous back into the wilderness where it knows itself true among the violent and the dead.”
― Alden Bell, quote from The Reapers are the Angels
Inferno
The Story of My Life
The Bluest Eye
The Sirens of Titan
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