Happy new year, a lot of luck to you all!

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.
Thomas Jefferson

Write it

If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.
Toni Morrison

Clever

I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.
Oscar Wilde

I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.
Friedrich Nietzsche

People change and forget to tell each other.
Lillian Hellman

Happiness

Even if happiness forgets you a little bit, never completely forget about it.
Jacques Prévert

Useful

It is truly useful since it is beautiful.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The biggest loss

The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. - is sure to be noticed.

Søren Kierkegaard

Drawing and talking

I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies.

Le Corbusier

A happy change

We are not the same person this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy change if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.

W. Somerset Maugham

I am happy to announce that the Quoted Images Imaged Quotes blog is back, check it out.

Books

Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn’t carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.
Stephen King

Love is not all

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

Edna St Vincent Millay

German version of Carpe diem

Nothing is worth more than this day.
Goethe

Hope

Hope is the dream of a waking man.
Aristotle

..And wisdom is a butterfly
And not a gloomy bird of prey..

William Butler Yeats

Books went on living

There are books so alive that you're always afraid that while you weren't reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?

Marina Tsvetaeva

Like the gnawing of a mouse

...
Love has gone and left me, — and the neighbors knock and borrow,
And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse, —
And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow
There's this little street and this little house.

Edna St Vincent Millay, from Ashes of Life

Those who live by the sea

Those who live by the sea can hardly form a single thought of which the sea would not be part.
Hermann Broch

Love is friendship set on fire.
Jeremy Taylor

The truth

The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is.
Susan Sontag

I made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it short.
Blaise Pascal

Sanctuary

My land is bare of chattering folk;
The clouds are low along the ridges,
And sweet's the air with curly smoke
From all my burning bridges.

Dorothy Parker

An old classic...

Dust Of Snow

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

Robert Frost

...and another one

......

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)


E.E.Cummings

Advice

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.
Erica Jong

The truth

In times of universal deceit, to tell the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
George Orwell

Hero

The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.

Umberto Eco

THe funniest joke in the world

My way of joking is to tell the truth. It is the funniest joke in the world.
George Bernard Shaw

Silence

I catch the pattern
Of your silence
Before you speak.

I do not need
To hear a word.

In your silence
Every tone I seek
Is heard.


Langston Hughes

Autumn verses in the spring

En la tarde lluviosa
mi corazón aprende
la tragedia otoñal
que los árboles llueven.

...

In the rain-swept afternoon
my heart discovers
the tragedy of autumn
raining from the trees.


Federico García Lorca

Confidence

Most of the confidence which I appear to feel, especially when influenced by noon wine, is only a pretense.
Tennessee Williams

Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
Mark Twain

It takes a long time to grow an old friend.
John Leonard

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.
Helen Keller

Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

Paul Engle

Mondays are meshed with Tuesdays
and the week with the whole year.
Time cannot be cut
with your weary scissors,
and all the names of the day
are washed out by the waters of night.

Pablo Neruda

Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.
George Bernard Shaw

Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive.
When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Laughter on American television has taken the place of the chorus in Greek tragedy. In other countries, the business of laughing is left to the viewers. Here, their laughter is put on the screen, integrated into the show. It is the screen that is laughing and having a good time. You are simply left alone with your consternation.

Jean Baudrillard

...
Some time if we’re not yet,
if we’re not gone, if we’re not coming,
under seven layers of dust…
we’ll be together, love,
strangely confused together…

Pablo Neruda

Like dreams, statistics are a form of wish fulfillment.
Jean Baudrillard

There are many ways to drown, only the most obvious wave their arms as they're going under.
Nick Flynn

Why should I be bitter
About someone who was
A complete stranger
Until a certain moment
In a day that has passed.

SAIGYÔ (12th century)

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
Søren Kierkegaard