“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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“Codependency is about normal behaviors taken too far. It’s about crossing lines.”
― Melody Beattie, quote from The New Codependency: Help and Guidance for Today's Generation
“She deserves heaven, I think. Silly as that sounds. I hope she got there. She never hurt anybody.…” His voice drifted so low he was hard to hear. “But I’ve hurt people.… I’d have hurt those guys today. All for a girl.” He snorted a laugh, but it could have been a cough. “One I couldn’t even … tell the truth to.”
― Anthony Breznican, quote from Brutal Youth
“If you consider your mind like a garden,' he began earnestly, `a garden needs to be tended regularly to prevent weeds from springing and suffocating other flowers and plants, to keep the garden tidy and clear, if you like. The mind works in the same way. Negative thoughts spring up and you must be aware of them, but do not attach yourself to them. Simply, you must discard them like a weed, cast them aside so that positive thoughts are given the space to dazzle in the sunlight.”
― Tami Egonu, quote from Bird
“On May 9, 1916, the British and French entered into a clandestine treaty on how they intended to carve up the region. The treaty was the Sykes-Picot, named for the negotiators. Always described as infamous, the treaty ignored both Jewish aspirations and Sharif Husain’s personal ambitions. And so Palestine became the ‘twice promised land.”
― Leon Uris, quote from The Haj
“Men are tested and tried amongst deceptions radically and they are winning for themselves abilities to give, to deliberate, to stand fast, to choose well, to discriminate.”
“They are far from the 'automata' of the Universe some think them to be. They dance the starry path and are sharpening their knowledge with every orbit of each positive thought travelled.”
― Gabriel Brunsdon, quote from Azlander: Second Nature
Please Look After Mo...
Into the Forest
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Willing Captive
The Spectacular NowBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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