Kurt Vonnegut · 288 pages
Rating: (30.9K votes)
“If you can do no good, at least do no harm.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
“Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go around looking for it, and I think it can be poisonous. I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, 'Please — a little less love, and a little more common decency'.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
“There is no peace, I'm sorry to say. We find it. We lose it. We find it again. We lose it again.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
“Why don't you take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut? Why don't you take a flying fuck at the mooooooooooooon?”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
“Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
“Perhaps I am the turtle, able to live simply anywhere, even underwater for short periods, with my home on my back.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
“Perhaps some people really are born unhappy. I surely hope not. Speaking for my sister and myself: We were born with the capacity and determination to be utterly happy all the time. Perhaps even in this we were freaks. Hi ho.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
“I love you, Eliza,” I said.
She thought about it. “No,” she said at last, “I don’t like it.”
“Why not?” I said.
“It’s as though you were pointing a gun at my head,” she said. “It’s just a way of getting somebody to say something they probably don’t mean. What else can I say, or anybody say, but, ‘I love you, too’?”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
“History is merely a list of surprises,' I said. 'It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again. Please write that down.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
“I have had some experiences with love, or think I have, anyway, although the ones I have liked best could easily be described as "common decency". I treated somebody well for a little while, or even for a tremendously long time, and that person treated me well in return. Love need not have anything to do with it. (...)
Love is where you find it. I think it is foolosh to go looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous.
I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, "Please - a little less love, and a little more common decency".”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
“This person has just arrived on this planet, knows nothing about it, has no standards by which to judge it. This person does not care what it becomes. It is eager to become absolutely anything it is supposed to be.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
“Aside from battles, the history of nations seemed to consist of nothing but powerless old poops like myself, heavily medicated and vaguely beloved in the long ago, coming to kiss the boots of young psychopaths.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
“I have had some experiences with love, or think I have, anyway, although the ones I have liked best could easily be described as "common decency." I treated somebody well for a little while, or maybe even for a tremendously long time, and that person treated me well in turn. Love need not have had anything to do with it.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
“I can think of another quickie education for a child, which, in its way, is almost as salutary: Meeting a human being who is tremendously respected by the adult world, and realizing that that person is actually a malicious lunatic.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
“The museums in children’s minds, I think, automatically empty themselves in times of utmost horror—to protect the children from eternal grief.
For my own part, though: It would have been catastrophe if I had forgotten my sister at once. I had never told her so, but she was the person I had always written for. She was the secret of whatever artistic unity I had ever achieved. She was the secret of my technique. Any creation which has any wholeness and harmoniousness, I suspect, was made by an artist or inventor with an audience of one in mind.
Yes, and she was nice enough, or Nature was nice enough, to allow me to feel her presence for a number of years after she died—to let me go on writing for her. But then she began to fade away, perhaps because she had more important business elsewhere.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
“And how did we
then face the odds,
of man's rude slapstick,
yes, and God's?
Quite at home and unafraid,
Thank-you,
in a game
our dreams remade.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
“Also: I cannot distinguish between the love I have for people and the love I have for dogs.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
“What does seem important? Bargaining in good faith with destiny.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
“FËDOR Mikhailovich Dostoevski, the
Russian novelist, said one time that, "One sacred memory from childhood is perhaps the best education." I can think of another quickie education for a child, which, in its way, is almost as salutary: Meeting a human being who is tremendously respected by the adult world, and realizing that that person is actually a malicious lunatic.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
“We have hugged each other maybe three or four times - on birthdays,very likely, and clumsily. We have never hugged in moments of grief.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
“Standing among all those tiny, wavering lights, I felt as though I were God, up to my knees in the Milky Way.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
“I am a brother to writers everywhere.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
“Vera had not sensed my approach. She was peering into the instrument and turning knobs with child-like seriousness and ineptitude. It was obvious that she had never used a microscope before.
I stole closer to her, and then I said, "Boo!"
She jerked her head away from the eyepiece.
"Hello," I said.
"You scared me to death," she said.
"Sorry," I said, and I laughed.
These ancient games go on and on. It's nice they do.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
“It’s as though you were pointing a gun at my head. It’s just a way of getting somebody to say something they probably don’t mean. What else can I say, or anybody say, but, ‘I love you too’?”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
“Yes, and Eliza and I composed a precocious critique of the Constitution of the United Staes of America, too. We argued that it was a good scheme for misery as any, since its success in keeping the common people reasonably happy and proud depended on the strength of the people themselves-- and yet it described no practical machinery which would tend to make the people, as opposed to their elected representatives, strong.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
“Love is where you find it. I think it is foolish to go looking for it, and I think it can often be poisonous.
I wish that people who are conventionally supposed to love each other would say to each other, when they fight, "Please—a little less love, and a little more common decency.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
“My brother said this to him, tapping his own forehead with his fingertips: “If you think this laboratory is bad, you should see what it’s like in here.” And so on. ***”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
“Per favore, un po' meno d'amore e un po' più di dignità.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
Kurt Vonnegut
Born place: in Indianapolis, Indiana, The United States
Born date November 11, 1922
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“What a beautiful thing, to walk amidst the endless diversity of life with the ability to perceive the source and the reality of its unity.”
― quote from Meditations from the Mat: Daily Reflections on the Path of Yoga
“Ho l'impressione che l'uomo non possa essere felice così facilmente! La felicità è come quei palazzi delle isole incantate alle cui porte stanno a difesa i draghi: bisogna combattere per conquistarli.”
― Alexandre Dumas, quote from The Count of Monte Cristo, V1
“The only monster you need to worry about in this life is the one that stares at you from the mirror each morning. You tame him, make friends with him, and the rest of life is nothing you can't handle.”
― Charles Martin, quote from Chasing Fireflies: A Novel of Discovery
“Great actions have shaped our society.’ Sindermann said. The greatest of these, physically, has been the Emperor's formal and complete unification of Terra, the outward sequel to which, this Great Crusade, we are now engaged upon. But the greatest, intellectually, has been our casting off of that heavy mantle called religion. Religion damned our species for thousands of years, from the lowest superstition to the highest conclaves of spiritual faith. It drove us to madness, to war,
to murder, it hung upon us like a disease, like a shackle ball. I'll tell you what religion was... No, you tell me. You, there?'
'Ignorance, sir.’
Thank you, Khanna. Ignorance. Since the earliest times, our species has striven to understand the workings of the cosmos, and where that understanding has failed, or fallen short, we have filled in the gaps, plastered over the discrepancies, with blind faith. Why does the sun go round the sky? I don't know, so I will attribute it to the efforts of a sun god with a golden chariot. Why do people die? I can't say, but I will choose to believe it is the murky business of a reaper who carries souls to some afterworld.”
― Dan Abnett, quote from Horus Rising
“Observing the behavior of individual fowl in a henhouse, we note that birds lower in rank are pecked by, and give way to, birds of higher rank. In an ideal case, there exists a linear order of rank with a top hen who pecks all the others. Those in the middle ranks peck those below them but respect all the hens above them. At the bottom there is a drudge who has to take it from everyone. (Adolf Remane, Vertebrates and Their Ways)”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, quote from The Emperor
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