Site uses cookies to provide basic functionality.

OK
Search Quotes tags
Query
Tags
Author
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ▲ ▼
Link Quote Stars Tags Author
612e9d8 The human race is unimportant. It is the self that must not be betrayed." "I suppose one could say that Hitler didn't betray his self." "You are right. He did not. But millions of Germans did betray their selves. That was the tragedy. Not that one man had the courage to be evil. But that millions had not the courage to be good." -- tragedy war hitler John Fowles
3da0d7e I love making, I love doing. I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching and copying and dead at heart. John Fowles
1a84acb To write poetry and to commit suicide, apparently so contradictory, had really been the same, attempts at escape. suicide poetry John Fowles
c63ae16 I think we are just insects, we live a bit and then die and that's the lot. There's no mercy in things. There's not even a Great Beyond. There's nothing. insect nihilistic nihilism John Fowles
a18857e We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words. John Fowles
7fa1072 If you forget everything else about me, please remember this. I walked down that street and I never looked back and I love you. I love you. I love you so much that I shall hate you for ever for today. John Fowles
c4f5b50 We all want things we can't have. Being a decent human being is accepting that. John Fowles
6cf9c55 Once upon a time there was a young prince who believed in all things but three. He did not believe in princesses, he did not believe in islands, he did not believe in God. His father, the king, told him that such things did not exist. As there were no princesses or islands in his father's domains, and no sign of God, the young prince believed his father. But then, one day, the prince ran away from his palace. He came to the next land. There.. suicide magic death god life philosophy John Fowles
aaba990 I hate the uneducated and the ignorant. I hate the pompous and the phoney. I hate the jealous and the resentful. I hate the crabbed and mean and the petty. I hate all ordinary dull little people who aren't ashamed of being dull and little. phoney resentful uneducated John Fowles
907be44 It's despair at the lack of feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world. It's despair that perfectly normal young men can be made vicious and evil because they've won a lot of money. And then do what you've done to me. love the-collector john-fowles despair obsession John Fowles
c5cdbf7 The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself. questions John Fowles
ed699f0 When you draw something it lives and when you photograph it it dies philosophy John Fowles
8fcb241 Forgetting's not something you do, it happens to you. Only it didn't happen to me. John Fowles
18b86e8 I am infinitely strange to myself. John Fowles
94615ad Greece is like a mirror. It makes you suffer. Then you learn.' To live alone?' To live. With what you are. John Fowles
71c2d80 Between skin and skin, there is only light. John Fowles
3b56489 You wish to be liked. I wish simply to be. One day you will know what that means, perhaps. And you will smile. Not against me. But with me. John Fowles
6c419d7 The power of women! I've never felt so full of mysterious power. Men are a joke. We're so weak physically, so helpless with things. Still, even today. But we're stronger than they are. We can stand their cruelty. They can't stand ours. John Fowles
c9f8e24 The ordinary man is the curse of civilization. John Fowles
a578e4e It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live. John Fowles
18c8f0f The dead live." "How do they live?" "By love." -- love John Fowles
01e2344 There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist. god John Fowles
1a903d2 I just think of things as beautiful or not. Can't you understand? I don't think of good or bad. Just of beautiful or ugly. I think a lot of nice things are ugly and a lot of nasty things are beautiful. good beauty ugliness John Fowles
6061bc1 Liking other people is an illusion we have to cherish in ourselves if we are to live in society. people society John Fowles
4235cee I acquired expensive habits and affected manners. I got a third-class degree and a first-class illusion: that I was a poet. But nothing could have been less poetic that my seeing-through-all boredom with life in general and with making a living in particular. I was too green to know that all cynicism masks a failure to cope-- an impotence, in short; and that to despise all effort is the greatest effort of all. But I did absorb a small dose .. John Fowles
3100439 He was one of the most supremely stupid men I have ever met. He taught me a great deal. irony John Fowles
9a01f6e It is not only species of animal that die out, but whole species of feeling. And if you are wise you will never pity the past for what it did not know, but pity yourself for what it did. John Fowles
442ea9c Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because they imagine it is the one thing that stops women laughing at them. In it they can reduce women to the status of objects. That is the great distinction between the sexes. Men see objects, women see relationship between objects. Whether the objects love each other, need each other, match each other. It is an extra dimension of feeling we men are without and one that makes war abhor.. John Fowles
c4a8c5d If anything might hurt her, silence would; and I wanted to hurt her. silence John Fowles
fa5c1d9 I read and I read; and I was like a medieval king, I had fallen in love with the picture long before I saw the reality. John Fowles
9046bf6 They're beautiful. But sad.' Everything's sad if you make it so, I said. John Fowles
5ff668b Alive. Alive in the way that death is alive. life John Fowles
f1cde3b You do not even think of your own past as quite real; you dress it up, you gild it or blacken it, censor it, tinker with it...fictionalize it, in a word, and put it away on a shelf - your book, your romanced autobiography. We are all in the flight from the real reality. That is the basic definition of Homo sapiens. reality John Fowles
4032f26 Just those three words, said and meant. I love you. They were quite hopeless. He said it as he might have said, I have cancer. His fairy story. hopelessness love John Fowles
fba1bd8 The supposed great misery of our century is the lack of time; our sense of that, not a disinterested love of science, and certainly not wisdom, is why we devote such a huge proportion of the ingenuity and income of our societies to finding faster ways of doing things - as if the final aim of mankind was to grow closer not to a perfect humanity, but to a perfect lightning-flash. John Fowles
0606d09 He is solid; immovable, iron-willed. He showed me one day his killing bottle. I'm imprisoned in it. Fluttering against the glass. Because I can see through it I still think I can escape. I have hope. But it's all an illusion. A thick round wall of glass. John Fowles
93109c0 The craving to risk death is our last great perversion. We come from night, we go into night. Why live in night? John Fowles
ea5049d You must make, always. You must act, if you believe something. Talking about acting is like boasting about pictures you're going to paint. The most terrible bad form. John Fowles
1ca0727 It came to me...that I didn't want to be anywhere else in the world at that moment, that what I was feeling at that moment justified all I had been through, because all I had been through my being there. I was experiencing...a new self-acceptance, a sense that I had to be this mind and this body, its vices and its virtues, and that I had no other chance or choice. John Fowles
89df635 I am one in a row of specimens. It's when I try to flutter out of line that he hates me. I'm meant to be dead, pinned, always the same, always beautiful. He knows that part of my beauty is being alive. but it's the dead me he wants. He wants me living-but-dead. kidnap control John Fowles
7a06a8b Art's cruel. You can get away with murder with words. But a picture is like a window straight through to your inmost heart. words murder John Fowles
249fdd5 It is me. I am his madness. For years he's been looking for something to put his madness into. And he found me. the-collector John Fowles
127afe1 There is no plan. All is hazard. And the only thing that will preserve us is ourselves. John Fowles
aba90d2 We are all in flight from the real reality. That is the basic definition of Homo Sapiens. John Fowles
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ▲ ▼