“A theatre is the most important sort of house in the world, because that's where people are shown what they could be if they wanted, and what they'd like to be if they dared to and what they really are”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Moominsummer Madness
“I'll have to calm down a bit. Or else I'll burst with happiness”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Moominsummer Madness
“There's no need to imagine that you're a wondrous beauty, because that's what you are.”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Moominsummer Madness
“The spirit of adventure sped through his soul on mighty wings.”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Moominsummer Madness
“Isn't it fun when one's friends get exactly what suits them?”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Moominsummer Madness
“We'll always keep our bangles in brown pond water in the future. They're so much more beautiful that way”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Moominsummer Madness
“Robes, dresses, frocks. They hung in endless rows, in hundreds, one beside the other all around the room - gleaming brocade, fluffy clouds of tulle and swansdown, flowery silk, night-black velvet with glittering spangles everywhere like small, many-coloured blinker beacons.”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Moominsummer Madness
“The Snork Maiden looked around her. Then she leaned forward and whispered in the Fillyjonk’s outstretched ear: “First you must turn seven times around yourself, mumbling a little and stamping your feet. Then you go backward to a well, and turn around, and look down in it. And then, down in the water, you’ll see the person you’re going to marry!” “And how do you get him up from there?” asked the Fillyjonk excitedly.”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Moominsummer Madness
“Because we’re going to stay here a little while and calm down until I’ve learned your names. Light my pipe, someone!”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Moominsummer Madness
“How nice it feels to be good," she thought quietly.”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Moominsummer Madness
Tove Jansson
Born place: in Helsinki, Finland
Born date August 9, 1914
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“What is the use of beauty in woman? Provided a woman is physically well made and capable of bearing children, she will always be good enough in the opinion of economists.
What is the use of music? -- of painting? Who would be fool enough nowadays to prefer Mozart to Carrel, Michael Angelo to the inventor of white mustard?
There is nothing really beautiful save what is of no possible use. Everything useful is ugly, for it expresses a need, and man's needs are low and disgusting, like his own poor, wretched nature. The most useful place in a house is the water-closet.
For my part, saving these gentry's presence, I am of those to whom superfluities are necessaries, and I am fond of things and people in inverse ratio to the service they render me. I prefer a Chinese vase with its mandarins and dragons, which is perfectly useless to me, to a utensil which I do use, and the particular talent of mine which I set most store by is that which enables me not to guess logogriphs and charades. I would very willingly renounce my rights as a Frenchman and a citizen for the sight of an undoubted painting by Raphael, or of a beautiful nude woman, -- Princess Borghese, for instance, when she posed for Canova, or Julia Grisi when she is entering her bath. I would most willingly consent to the return of that cannibal, Charles X., if he brought me, from his residence in Bohemia, a case of Tokai or Johannisberg; and the electoral laws would be quite liberal enough, to my mind, were some of our streets broader and some other things less broad. Though I am not a dilettante, I prefer the sound of a poor fiddle and tambourines to that of the Speaker's bell. I would sell my breeches for a ring, and my bread for jam. The occupation which best befits civilized man seems to me to be idleness or analytically smoking a pipe or cigar. I think highly of those who play skittles, and also of those who write verse. You may perceive that my principles are not utilitarian, and that I shall never be the editor of a virtuous paper, unless I am converted, which would be very comical.
Instead of founding a Monthyon prize for the reward of virtue, I would rather bestow -- like Sardanapalus, that great, misunderstood philosopher -- a large reward to him who should invent a new pleasure; for to me enjoyment seems to be the end of life and the only useful thing on this earth. God willed it to be so, for he created women, perfumes, light, lovely flowers, good wine, spirited horses, lapdogs, and Angora cats; for He did not say to his angels, 'Be virtuous,' but, 'Love,' and gave us lips more sensitive than the rest of the skin that we might kiss women, eyes looking upward that we might behold the light, a subtile sense of smell that we might breathe in the soul of the flowers, muscular limbs that we might press the flanks of stallions and fly swift as thought without railway or steam-kettle, delicate hands that we might stroke the long heads of greyhounds, the velvety fur of cats, and the polished shoulder of not very virtuous creatures, and, finally, granted to us alone the triple and glorious privilege of drinking without being thirsty, striking fire, and making love in all seasons, whereby we are very much more distinguished from brutes than by the custom of reading newspapers and framing constitutions.”
― Théophile Gautier, quote from Mademoiselle de Maupin
“You see, one loves the sunset when one is so sad.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, quote from Der kleine Prinz
“The vicious cycle starts: if you fail at something, you think it is your fault. Therefore you think you can’t do that task. As a result, next time you have to do the task, you believe you can’t, so you don’t even try. The result is that you can’t, just as you thought.”
― Donald A. Norman, quote from Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition (Revised)
“If you’re terrible, you can write everybody off, like, “I don’t know what the hell those idiots are doing?” I knew what those idiots were doing. And I knew that they did it better than me. In”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
“Fire and water," he said, "don't really mix. You could say they're incompatible. But when they do love each other, they love passionately.”
― Cornelia Funke, quote from Sangre de tinta
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