“Do you know a cure for me?"
"Why yes," he said, "I know a cure for everything. Salt water."
"Salt water?" I asked him.
"Yes," he said, "in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea.”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Seven Gothic Tales
“The real difference between God and human beings, he thought, was that God cannot stand continuance. No sooner has he created a season of a year, or a time of the day, than he wishes for something quite different, and sweeps it all away. No sooner was one a young man, and happy at that, than the nature of things would rush one into marriage, martyrdom or old age. And human beings cleave to the existing state of things. All their lives they are striving to hold the moment fast....Their art itself is nothing but the attempt to catch by all means the one particular moment, one light, the momentary beauty of one woman or one flower, and make it everlasting.”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Seven Gothic Tales
“For really, dreaming is the well-mannered people's way of committing suicide.”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Seven Gothic Tales
“The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Seven Gothic Tales
“Where, My Lord, is music bred—upon the instrument or within the ear that listens? The loveliness of woman is created in the eye of man.”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Seven Gothic Tales
“She had what the Councillor knew, in the technical language of the ballet, as "ballon", a lightness that is not only the negation of weight, but which actually seems to carry upwards and make for flight, and which is rarely found in thin dancers - as if the matter itself had here become lighter than air, so that the more there is of it the better it works.”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Seven Gothic Tales
“Perhaps to them the first condition for anything having real charm was this: that it must not really exist.”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Seven Gothic Tales
“Truth, like time, is an idea arising from, and dependent upon, human intercourse.”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Seven Gothic Tales
Isak Dinesen
Born place: in Rungsted, Denmark
Born date April 17, 1885
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“The slave’s grin was hard with malice. ‘Damn you, Fear Sengar.’ ‘How did that offend you?’ ‘You just stated the central argument – both for and against the institution of slavery. I was wasted, was I? Or of necessity kept under firm heel. Too many people like me on the loose and no ruler, tyrant or otherwise, could sit assured on a throne. We would stir things up, again and again. We would challenge, we would protest, we would defy. By being enlightened, we would cause utter mayhem. So, Fear, kick another basket of fish over here, it’s better for everyone.’ ‘Except you.’ ‘No, even me. This way, all my brilliance remains ineffectual, harmless to anyone and therefore especially to myself, lest my lofty ideas loose a torrent of blood.’ Seren Pedac grunted, ‘You are frightened by your own ideas, Udinaas?’ ‘All the time, Acquitor. Aren’t you?”
― Steven Erikson, quote from The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen
“The magic will not solve your problems. It will only add to them. The magic will not make people like you. It will increase their distrust. The magic will not ease your pain. It will twist and burn inside you until sometimes you think that even death would be preferable."
-Antimodes, "Soulforge”
― Margaret Weis, quote from The Soulforge
“...and yet, in the end, did Klara Hitler's sickly son ever fire a gun? One hollow, hateful little an. One last awful thought: all the harm he ever did was done for him by others.”
― Mary Doria Russell, quote from A Thread of Grace
“The city went on about its business. A new day would soon begin, and nothing so inconsequential as a death possessed the power to delay it. It was just a life, after all: no more, nor less than that.”
― R.J. Ellory, quote from A Quiet Belief in Angels
“I'm not what they expect. About once a year I get discovered, get called a diamond in the rough.”
― Michael Dorris, quote from A Yellow Raft in Blue Water
Bound by Flames
Noggin
After the Night
The Burn Journals
Moscow to the End of...
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