"What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality."

39 quotes

🇦🇺J. M. Coetzee

Literature

b. 1940

"Can desire grow out of admiration, or are the two quite distinct species? What would it be like to lie side by side, naked, breast to breast, with a woman one principally admires?"

"I am deeply ashamed at my failure to serve His Majesty."

"Polygamy and polyandry distribute the frightening physical solidarity of monogamy. Monogamous couples are always hungry for company: to dilute sex."

"A long review of The Tunnel in Arizona Quarterly, 48.1"

"Japan's nomination of Mr. Eisuke Sakakibara... for the post of Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, 2000"

5 quotes

🇬🇧Henry Savile Clarke

Literature

1841–1893

"I haven't seen this chap's boots yet, but I should say from his knock he's a good opinion of himself."

"I have been called a Rogue Elephant, a Cannibal Shark, and a crocodile. I am none the worse. I remain a caged, and rather sardonic, lion, in a particularly contemptible and ill-run zoo."

"The motto of science is not just Pauca but rather Plurima ex paucissimis — the most out of the least."

"The magic of music is so strong, getting stronger, it should break any shackle of another art."

"Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate."

"he whole concept of transcendence was very close to my heart, the concept that man is more than his circumstances, more even than himself."

"The king was astonished at the vast amount of property owned by the Marquis of Carabas."

"The curse of Scottish literature is the lack of a whole language, which finally means the lack of a whole mind."

"The story is not in the words; it's in the struggle."

"Welles is at once as abnormal and as natural as Niagara Falls."

"These are the sensations and feelings that are gradually blunted by education, staled by custom, rejected in favor of social conformity."

"And love became the world's origin and the world's ruler, yet littered its path is with flowers and blood, flowers and blood."

"We write as we feel, as we think, with our entire body."

"God created the world to be praised on the subtle nature of his existence."

"You can't lead the people if you don't love the people. You can't save the people, if you don't serve the people."

"You cannot imagine the wild enthusiasm that these two men created in Vienna. Newspapers went into raptures over each new waltz, and innumerable articles appeared about Lanner and Strauss."

"“Oh, my dear fellow! I’m not indulgin’ in implications. I’m merely givin’ tongue to my youthful curiosity, don’t y’ know."

"Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form."

"The work of art is a stuffed crocodile. ."

2 quotes

Julius Fučík (journalist)

Journalism

1903–1943

"Humans, I have loved you all. Be vigilant!"

"No progress, either moral or material, can be made in a world which is frozen, like ours, into a rigid mold of suppression of liberties."

"I guess I was the most unbohemian of all bohemians. My bohemianism consisted of not wanting to get involved with the stupid stuff that I thought people wanted you to get involved with — ... namely America..."

"Sexual speech, not MacKinnon's speech, is the most repressed and disdained kind of expression in our world, and MacKinnon is no rebel or radical to attack it."

11 quotes

🇺🇸Joseph Stiglitz

Politics

New Keynesian economics

b. 1943

"New technologies are enhancing the market power of incumbent, dominant firms, such as Microsoft, which are all from the developed world; for the first time, in a key global industry, there is a near-global monopolist."

"This Hungarian Van Cliburn impressed me from the outset with a deep and confident involvement in the music, a capacity for both power and delicacy, and a preference for passion over absolute accuracy."

"There's nothing more debauched than thinking."

"We have hereafter only two roads to choose: one is to embrace the ancient literature and die, the other is to forsake the ancient literature and live."

"That teaching of modern metaphysics which exhorts man to feel comparatively little esteem for the truly thinking portion of himself and to honor the active and willing part of himself with all his devotion..."

"Jealousy is a virtue of democracies which preserves them from tyrants."

17 quotes

Notable Quotes

"...the end is in the beginning and lies far ahead."

— Ralph Ellison, b. 1914View →

"Meaning grows in the mind, but the shape and form of the act remains."

— Ralph Ellison, b. 1914View →

"A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action."

— Ralph Ellison, b. 1914View →

"Invisible Man quotes analyzed; study guide with themes, character, literary devices, teacher resources"

— Ralph Ellison, b. 1914View →

"Our task then is always to challenge the apparent forms of reality—that is, the fixed meaning and values of the few—and to struggle with it until it reveals its mad, vari-implicated chaos, its false faces, and on until it surrenders its insight, its truth."

— Ralph Ellison, b. 1914View →

Also explore

🏺 Ancient →🏛️ Classical →⚔️ Medieval →🎨 Renaissance →🇺🇸 United States →🇬🇧 United Kingdom →🇫🇷 France →