Pramoedya Ananta Toer · 400 pages
Rating: (761 votes)
“Hidup tanpa harapan adalah hidup yang kosong”
― Pramoedya Ananta Toer, quote from The Mute's Soliloquy: a Memoir
“Tidak, yang mati tidak harus bisu. Energi mereka tetap hidup melalui berbagai cara, jalan dan sarana, terutama melalui kenangan dan mulut para nyawa yang lolos dari saringannya di Buru ini. Pada suatu kali mungkin ada yang mampu mencatatnya tanpa tangannya gemetar dan tanpa membasahi kertasnya.”
― Pramoedya Ananta Toer, quote from The Mute's Soliloquy: a Memoir
“But I couldn't stop there. The call of adventure was much stronger and more inviting.”
― Pramoedya Ananta Toer, quote from The Mute's Soliloquy: a Memoir
“I came to see that man finds meaning in his existence only through the active demonstration of his human self, a cosmos comprising the entire constellation of life's factors: culture, civilization, tradition, history, ideals, facts, physical conditions, one's mental state, the ecology, and so on.”
― Pramoedya Ananta Toer, quote from The Mute's Soliloquy: a Memoir
“As hard as my life has been I have no desire for revenge. If I wish for anything it is for all the things that have been stolen from my life to be returned to me.”
― Pramoedya Ananta Toer, quote from The Mute's Soliloquy: a Memoir
“My words, my writing, my actions—these have never been for myself alone, either directly or indirectly. There is no such thing as an artist who creates art only for himself. That is masturbation.”
― Pramoedya Ananta Toer, quote from The Mute's Soliloquy: a Memoir
“People are raised to believe that happiness is the land to which they are destined to travel. But that belief, which one so easily accepts as true, might just as well be a mirage.”
― Pramoedya Ananta Toer, quote from The Mute's Soliloquy: a Memoir
“There is at least one advantage to being an Indonesian citizen: With this country's expanse of land and even greater expanse of sea, it's not difficult finding space for one's grave.”
― Pramoedya Ananta Toer, quote from The Mute's Soliloquy: a Memoir
Pramoedya Ananta Toer
Born place: in Blora (on island of Java), Indonesia
Born date February 6, 1925
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“And yet it had come to this: a cult that followed a dogmatic hard line of exclusion and repression, believed its teachings alone were the way that others must follow, and claimed special knowledge of something that had happened more than five centuries ago. It did nothing to soften its rigid stance, nothing to heal wounds that it had helped to create by deliberately shunning people of other Races, and nothing to explore the possibility of other beliefs. It held its ground even in the face of hard evidence that perhaps it had misjudged and refused to consider that it was courting a danger that might destroy everyone. p96”
― Terry Brooks, quote from Bearers of the Black Staff
“My soul, where are you? Do you hear me? I speak, I call you - are you there? I have returned, I am here again. I have shaken the dust of all the lands from my feet, and I have come to you, I am with you. After long years of long wandering, I have come to you again. Should I tell you everything I have seen, experienced, and drunk in? Or do you not want to hear about all the noise of life and the world? But one thing you must know: the one thing I have learned is that one must live this life. Do you still know me? How long the separation lasted! Everything has become so different. And how did I find you? How strange my journey was! What words should I use to tell you on what twisted paths a good star has guided me to you? Give me your hand, my almost forgotten soul. How warm the joy at seeing you again, you long disavowed soul. Life has led me back to you. Let us thank the life I have lived for all the happy and all the sad hours, for every joy, for every sadness. My soul, my journey should continue with you. I will wander with you and ascend to my solitude.”
― C.G. Jung, quote from The Red Book: Liber Novus
“Darwin concluded that language ability is “an instinctive tendency to acquire an art,” a design that is not peculiar to humans but seen in other species such as song-learning birds. A language instinct may seem jarring to those who think of language as the zenith of the human intellect and who think of instincts as brute impulses that compel furry or feathered zombies to build a dam or up and fly south. But one of Darwin’s followers, William James, noted that an instinct possessor need not act as a “fatal automaton.” He argued that we have all the instincts that animals do, and many more besides; our flexible intelligence comes from the interplay of many instincts competing. Indeed, the instinctive nature of human thought is just what makes it so hard for us to see that it is an instinct: It takes…a mind debauched by learning to carry the process of making the natural seem strange, so far as to ask for the why of any instinctive human act. To the metaphysician alone can such questions occur as: Why do we smile, when pleased, and not scowl? Why are we unable to talk to a crowd as we talk to a single friend? Why does a particular maiden turn our wits so upside-down? The common man can only say, “Of course we smile, of course our heart palpitates at the sight of the crowd, of course we love the maiden, that beautiful soul clad in that perfect form, so palpably and flagrantly made for all eternity to be loved!” And so, probably, does each animal feel about the particular things it tends to do in presence of particular objects…. To the lion it is the lioness which is made to be loved; to the bear, the she-bear. To the broody hen the notion would probably seem monstrous that there should be a creature in the world to whom a nestful of eggs was not the utterly fascinating and precious and never-to-be-too-much-sat-upon object which it is to her.”
― Steven Pinker, quote from The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
“Kyle had to give her credit; it took skill—plus no
heart and a serious abuse of the English language—
to break up with someone in fewer than 140
characters.”
― Julie James, quote from About That Night
“I held her and she cried into my shoulder so deeply that I could feel the sorrow from her soul blending completely and profoundly with my own.”
― Christopher Scotton, quote from The Secret Wisdom of the Earth
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