Thinker online

2011-05-20T17:19:00.000+02:00

Where would be the merit if heroes were never afraid?
Alphonse Daudet

Happiness

2011-05-05T10:46:00.000+02:00

To have joy one must share it. Happiness was born a twin.
Lord Byron

Patience

2011-04-09T16:10:00.001+02:00

Patience is passion tamed.
Lyman Abbott

Liar

2011-04-09T16:08:00.001+02:00

The aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure. He is the very basis of civilized society.
Oscar Wilde

If you do it right

2011-03-12T10:18:00.000+01:00

You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.
Mae West

Change

2011-02-24T12:08:00.001+01:00

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
Andy Warhol

2011-02-04T10:26:00.002+01:00

Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.
Ann Landers

A serious response

2011-01-20T16:35:00.001+01:00

And that is just the point... how the world, moist and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That's the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. "Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?"
Mary Oliver

Optimists

2011-01-15T09:57:00.001+01:00

Pessimists are usually right and optimists are usually wrong but all the great changes have been accomplished by optimists.
Thomas L. Friedman

We go to the sea

2011-01-13T14:12:00.003+01:00

We should not forget that when we limp away afflicted through the spirit, it is not to the factory gates or to the corporate steps we pilgrimage. Instead we go to the sea for its salt. We find shade under the sycamores on the great avenues. Or we go to the rivers where water tells us modestly of its own sickness.
Sarah Hall

Art material

2011-01-09T18:30:00.001+01:00

All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.
Jorge Luis Borges

The aesthetic event

2011-01-03T19:30:00.000+01:00

Music, feelings of happiness, mythology, faces worn by time, certain twilights and certain places, want to tell us something, or they told us something that we should not have missed, or they are about to tell us something; this imminence of a revelation that is not produced is, perhaps, 'the aesthetic event'.
Jorge Luis Borges

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

2010-12-31T09:48:00.001+01:00

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

Write it

2010-12-17T14:11:00.001+01:00

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

2010-12-15T10:23:00.000+01:00

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

2010-12-15T10:19:00.001+01:00

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

2010-12-10T15:50:00.001+01:00

People change and forget to tell each other.
Lillian Hellman

Happiness

2010-12-04T00:13:00.001+01:00

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

Useful

2010-11-28T21:03:00.000+01:00

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

The biggest loss

2010-11-22T21:01:00.003+01:00

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

2010-11-19T09:30:00.001+01:00

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

Le Corbusier

A happy change

2010-11-19T09:29:00.001+01:00

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

2010-11-18T16:32:00.002+01:00

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

Books

2010-11-18T14:37:00.000+01:00

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

2010-11-11T10:11:00.001+01:00

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

2010-11-05T10:30:00.002+01:00

Nothing is worth more than this day.
Goethe

Hope

2010-11-05T10:29:00.000+01:00

Hope is the dream of a waking man.
Aristotle

2010-11-02T14:22:00.000+01:00

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

William Butler Yeats

Books went on living

2010-10-29T09:36:00.001+02:00

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

2010-10-28T11:18:00.004+02:00

...
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

2010-10-20T21:38:00.001+02:00

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

2010-10-16T19:41:00.002+02:00

Love is friendship set on fire.
Jeremy Taylor

The truth

2010-10-16T19:38:00.001+02:00

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

2010-09-20T12:02:00.001+02:00

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

Sanctuary

2010-09-08T11:39:00.000+02:00

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...

2010-08-30T11:29:00.006+02:00

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

2010-08-30T11:28:00.002+02:00

......

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

2010-08-23T10:59:00.000+02:00

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

The truth

2010-08-23T10:58:00.000+02:00

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

Hero

2010-07-06T12:27:00.000+02:00

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

2010-07-06T12:09:00.001+02:00

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

Silence

2010-05-18T23:48:00.001+02:00

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

2010-05-13T15:28:00.000+02:00

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

2010-04-29T19:27:00.000+02:00

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

2010-04-12T15:02:00.002+02:00

Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
Mark Twain

2010-04-08T23:15:00.000+02:00

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

2010-04-04T23:21:00.001+02:00

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

2010-03-17T22:31:00.000+01:00

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

Paul Engle

2010-03-09T12:32:00.000+01:00

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

2010-02-24T20:48:00.000+01:00

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

2010-02-17T09:30:00.000+01:00

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

2010-02-09T12:06:00.001+01:00

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

2010-02-03T18:50:00.002+01:00

...
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

2010-01-26T00:28:00.001+01:00

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

2010-01-15T09:57:00.002+01:00

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

2010-01-12T14:01:00.002+01:00

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)

2010-01-07T13:47:00.002+01:00

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
Søren Kierkegaard

2009-12-24T14:22:00.000+01:00

At Christmas, all roads lead home.
Marjorie Holmes

2009-12-21T16:33:00.002+01:00

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Oscar Wilde

The seeming defeat by the mist

2009-12-12T19:32:00.003+01:00

The mountain remains unmoved at seeming defeat by the mist.
Rabindranath Tagore

2009-12-05T10:21:00.001+01:00

As the end of the century approaches, all our culture is like the culture of flies at the beginning of winter. Having lost their agility, dreamy and demented, they turn slowly about the window in the first icy mists of morning. They give themselves a last wash and brush-up, their oscillated eyes roll, and they fall down the curtains.
Jean Baudrillard

The knowledge of autumn

2009-11-26T17:49:00.006+01:00

I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its leaves are a little yellow, its tone mellower, its colours richer, and it is tinged a little with sorrow and a premonition of death. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor of the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and is content. From a knowledge of those limitations and its richness of experience emerges a symphony of colours, richer than all, its green speaking of life and strength, its orange speaking of golden content and its purple of resignation and death.
Yutang Lin

(Beautiful photo by Luisa)

2009-11-25T23:16:00.002+01:00

We can't plan life. All we can do is be available for it.
Lauryn Hill

2009-11-18T09:10:00.001+01:00

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
Helen Keller

2009-11-14T16:38:00.000+01:00

Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry.
Muriel Rukeyser

2009-11-10T09:45:00.002+01:00

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
Winston S. Churchill

Beautiful, dark days of autumn rain

2009-10-30T20:19:00.002+01:00

My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Robert Frost, from My November Guest

2009-10-24T19:36:00.001+02:00

A day is a miniature eternity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

2009-10-19T13:00:00.001+02:00

Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

2009-10-08T11:54:00.003+02:00

Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece.
Nadia Boulanger

Readers

2009-10-05T11:51:00.001+02:00

I divide all readers into two classes: Those who read to remember and those who read to forget.
William Lyon Phelps

I will be back

2009-08-28T20:35:00.003+02:00

I will be away in the next couple of weeks, but I will be back in a month with more new quotes for you.
Have a great september everyone!

From a poem

2009-08-28T20:11:00.004+02:00

Times in the morning early
when it rained and the long gray
buildings came forward from darkness
offering their windows for light.

Mary Oliver, from Some Things The World Gave

Everything has been figured out

2009-08-26T00:02:00.001+02:00

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.
Jean-Paul Sartre

Measuring life

2009-08-17T11:01:00.002+02:00

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
Maya Angelou

Special days

2009-08-06T09:46:00.002+02:00

It is not everyday that the world arranges itself into a poem.
Wallace Stevens

A poem

2009-07-30T23:01:00.002+02:00

My heart born naked
was swaddled in lullabies.
Later alone it wore
poems for clothes.
Like a shirt
I carried on my back
the poetry I had read.

So I lived for half a century
until wordlessly we met.

From my shirt on the back of the chair
I learn tonight
how many years
of learning by heart
I waited for you.

— John Berger

A pause

2009-07-24T10:15:00.001+02:00

Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.
Guillaume Apollinaire

Arrival

2009-07-19T21:18:00.002+02:00

...the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
— T.S. Eliot

A good poem

2009-07-17T10:55:00.000+02:00

If after I read a poem the world looks like that poem for 24 hours or so I'm sure it's a good one—and the same goes for paintings.
Elizabeth Bishop

All we have to do

2009-07-15T11:22:00.002+02:00

All we have is to decide what to do with the time that is given to us.
J.R.R. Tolkien

We can never know

2009-07-12T17:11:00.000+02:00

We can never possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.
— Carl Sandburg

Counting

2009-07-12T13:19:00.001+02:00

Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.
Fyodor Dostoevsky

Comfortable eyes

2009-07-07T13:59:00.003+02:00

Our eye finds it more comfortable to respond to a given stimulus by reproducing once more an image that it has produced many times before, instead of registering what is different and new in an impression.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Poetry

2009-07-05T00:38:00.002+02:00

Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.
Thomas Gray

Used up

2009-06-29T18:21:00.000+02:00

I want to be all used up when I die.
George Bernard Shaw

We just keep asking

2009-06-26T15:51:00.001+02:00

So we keep asking, over and over,
Until a handful of earth
Stops our mouths --
But is that an answer?

Heinrich Heine

From a sonnet...

2009-06-22T19:42:00.001+02:00

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you as straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Pablo Neruda, from Sonnet XVII

Boredom

2009-06-22T11:46:00.001+02:00

In order to live free and happily you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice.
Richard Bach

Monotony of a decorous age

2009-06-20T10:21:00.001+02:00

Congratulate yourselves if you have done something strange and extravagant and broken the monotony of a decorous age.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Present

2009-06-18T17:53:00.000+02:00

Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why we call it 'The Present'.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Pleasure or happines

2009-06-17T12:09:00.002+02:00

Pleasure can be supported by an illusion; but happiness rests upon truth.
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort

The obvious

2009-06-12T10:30:00.004+02:00

There is nothing as deceptive as an obvious fact.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Profound simplicity, part 2

2009-06-11T16:16:00.003+02:00

Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limits of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.
Milan Kundera

True dreams

2009-06-08T11:20:00.002+02:00

Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?
Alfred Tennyson

Profound simplicity

2009-06-05T13:45:00.002+02:00

The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change.
Richard Bach

Torn between two desires

2009-06-02T19:28:00.002+02:00

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
E.B. White

Rusty words

2009-06-02T18:50:00.000+02:00

And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter— they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long.
Sylvia Plath

2009-05-28T16:55:00.002+02:00

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
Anne Frank

Common sense

2009-05-26T12:49:00.003+02:00

Common sense is what tells us the earth is flat.
Albert Einstein