Quotes

I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible

One can promise actions, but not feelings, for the latter are involuntary. He who promises to love forever or hate forever or be forever faithful to someone is promising something that is not in his power

My solitude doesn’t depend on the presence or absence of people; on the contrary, I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company

If I waited for perfection... I would never write a word

Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo

To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, and be nothing

For years there has been a theory that millions of monkeys typing at random on millions of typewriters would reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. The Internet has proven this theory to be untrue

History is the autobiography of a madman

Every action in our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity

I don't have any oratory skills. But I would not use them if I had.

There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life fully, entirely, completely, or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands

I shall pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it for I shall not pass this way again

For the man who thinks for himself becomes acquainted with the authorities for his opinions only after he has acquired them and merely as confirmation of them, while the book philosopher starts with his authorities, in that he constructs his opinions by collecting together the opinions of others: his mind then compares with that of the former as an automon compares with a living man

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very, very edge of despair. I have sought love first because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great I would often have sacrificed all the rest of my life for a few hours of that joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieved loneliness - that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined, This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what - at last - I have found. Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me

I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem