I love quotes! This collection here is very precious to me for I have been collecting quotes for some time now. I decided to put them up here on my webpage because they are an important part of myself. Most are quite depressing, please don't start criticizing me again because of that.
Quotes Arranged in Alphabetical Order (by author's last name)
A
B C
D E
F G
H I
J K
L M
N O
P Q
R S
T U
V W
X Y
Z
"An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness."
- Margaret Atwood"Sanity is the playground for the unimaginative."
-Anonymous"Enjoy life. There's plenty of time to be dead."
-Anonymous"Life goes on, having nowhere else to go"
- Diane Ackerman"Some people complain because God put thorns among roses
while others praise Him for putting roses among thorns."
-Anonymous"So you found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts? Whats
so amazing about really deep thoughts? Boy, you should pray
that I bleed real soon. How’s that for thought for you?"
- Tori Amos"If you are happy you are just not thinking hard enough"
-AnonymousWe give advice by the bucket but take it by the grain.
-William Alger"If you woke up breathing, congratulations! You have
another chance"
-Anonymous"You're not a fucked up person - You're a normal person
living in a fucked up world"
-AnonymousWe give advice by the bucket but take it by the grain.
-William Alger"Wisdom is scar tissue in disguise.
-Anonymous"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
-Anonymous"If we consistantly worry about the future, we are using
TODAYS resources to fight tomorrow's IMAGINED battles."
-Anonymous"LSD melts your mind, not in your hand."
-Anonymous"Suicide is a way of telling God, 'You can' fire me
because I QUIT!'"
-Anonymous
Submitted by Kathy"Sleep is death without the consequence."
-Anonymous
Submitted by Diana Quinn"The lights that shine through in the darkest moments are
the most brilliant."
-Anonymous
"Out of pain beauty does come."
-Anonymous
"Compliments last a second
Insults last a lifetime."
-Anonymous
Submitted by Ginger"Life is like a bad dream
The only difference is you don't feel happy to wake up."
-Anonymous
Submitted by Ginger"No-one to turn to
No-one to trust
The love in my heart
Just turns to dust."
-Anonymous
Submitted by Ginger"So live that you can look any man in the eye and tell
him to go to hell."
-Anonymous
"You say you hate the way you are then why must you
insist on making me your clone?"
-Anonymous
Submitted by Lahna"Every Saturday night we should stay home and watch
films because rewind on the remote of life does not work."
-Anonymous
Submitted by Kat"Write the bad things that are done to you in sand, but
write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble."
-Arabic Parable"There was never a genius without a tincture of madness."
-Aristotle"Will anyone know I've lived? or must I just become mush,
dissolving away... with no one to remember me..."
-Battle Angel Alita"Be happy while you're alive, you're dead alot longer "
-Anonymous"Sometimes you just have to jump and build your wings
on the way down"
- Anonymous"Nothing is Fool Proof to a Sufficiently Talented Fool..."
-Anonymous"Sometimes I am not myself...I am someone darker"
-Anonymous"There are always too many rotten pillars left standing,
too much festering humanity for man to bloom. The superstructure
is a lie and the foundation is a huge quaking fear."
-Anonymous"China all the way to New York... Ican feel the distnace getting close.
you're right next to me but Ineed an airplane. Ican feel the distance as
you breathe"
- Tori Amos"The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life: Overcome
fear, behold wonder."
- Aiscylos (525-456 BC)"Enjoy life. There's plenty of time to be dead."
-Anonymous"It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it
happens."
- Woody Allen"Dying is an art, like everything else."
-Anonymous"Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral."
- Kehlog Albran"You may forget with whom you laughed, but you will never forget"
with whom you wept.
-Arab Proverb"There is a foolish corner in the brain of the wisest man."
-Aristotle
"Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute."
-Josh Billings"Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging
day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways."
- Stephen Vincent Benét"Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think."
- Jean de la Bruycre"Life is pain. Anyone who tells you something different is
sellingsomething."
-Princess Bride"How will you know I am hurting,
If you cannot see my pain?
To wear it on my body
Tells what words cannot explain."
-C. Blount"My business not to remake myself, but to make the absolute best
of what God made."
-Robert Browning"Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils."
- Hector Berlioz"It's like déja vu all over again."
- Yogi Bear"He who is able thinks he is able."
-Buddha"Thousands of candles can be light from a single one.Happiness never
decreases by being spread"
-Buddha"My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot."
- Ashleigh Brilliant"Life may have no meaning - or even worse, it may have a meaning of
which I disapprove."
- Ashleigh Brilliant
"I'd rather die while I'm living than live while I'm dead."
- Jimmy Buffett"I don't feel good."
- Luther Burbank (dying words)
"In the depths of winter I finally learned there was in me an invincible summer."
-Albert Camus"The most wasted of all days is that on which one has not laughed."
- Chamfort"The sky is blue, and all the leaves are green. The sun's as warm as a baked
Potatoe, I think I know precisley what they mean when they say it's a Shpadoinkle day!"
-Cannibal the Musical"Don't walk behind me; I may not lead.
Don't walk in front of me;
I may not follow.
Just walk beside me and be my friend."
-Albert Camus"Think with your body And dance with your mind."
-Victor Hernandez Cruz"When walking in darkness...
Do not try to make the Sun rise by self-sacrifice,
but wait in confidence for the Dawn,
and enjoy the pleasures of the Night meanwhile..."
- Alistair Crowley"I like my penis, but I do not think it requires boldface, capitalization, italics
, or other forms of typographical emphasis. "
-Eugene Bild, Chicago Reader"It is much easier to repent of sins that we have committed than to repent of
those we intend to commit."
-Josh Billings"The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind."
-William Blake"Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?"
Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night."
-Charlie Brown
"You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness
consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life."
Albert Camus"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves
up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."
-Winston ChurchilThe dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them.
-William Clayton"None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them."
-C.C. Colton"Seek not every quality in one individual. "
-Confucius"Gossip is that which no one claims to like - but everybody enjoys."
-Joseph Conrad"Sincerity resembles spice. Too much repels you and too little leaves you wanting."
-Bill Copeland
"All of us, at certain moments of our lives, need to take advice and to receive help
from other people."
-Alexis Carrel, "Reflections on Life""What's this life for?"
-Creed, "What's This Life For""To be nobody-but-myself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make
me everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight,
and never stop fighting"
-ee cummings"I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves."
- Mary Wollstone Craft (1759-1797)"real love is forever"
-the crow
"Life is like a box of chocolates. It's a cheap thoughtless perfunctory gift that nobody
ever asks for. Unreturnable because all you ever get back is another box of chocolates,
so you're stuck with unidentifiable whipped mint crap that you mindlessly wolf down
when there's nothing left to eat. Sure, once in a while there's a peanut butter cup or an
english toffee, but they're gone too fast and the taste is fleeting. So you end up with
nothing but broken bits with hardened jelly and teeth shattering nuts. If you're desperate
enough to eat that, all you have left is an empty box filled with useless brown paper
wrappings."
-William B. Davis, The X-Files
Submitted by J.The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad.
-Salvador Dali"Fear can be healthier than whiskey, once man has acquired a taste for it."
-Donald Downes"Because I could not stop for Death --
He kindly stopped for me --
The carriage held but just ourselves
And immortality."
-Emily Dickinson "Because I Could Not Stop For Death""Without a struggle, there can be no progress."
-Frederick Douglas"And then a gloom as wide as an island,
of fermenting, broiling hate.
Death grips my veins,
Unveiling rancid petals,
Flowering forth foul nectar.
The space between a blink and a tear"
-Death Blooms"Somewhere out there, beneath the pale moon light, someone's thinking of me
and loving me tonight."
- Disney (Somewhere out there)"There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison
of one state to another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best
able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, that
we may appreciate the enjoyments of life."
-Alexandre Dumas "The Count of Monte Crisco"
"Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value."
-Albert Einstein"I'll not condemn you, i hate myself too much to ever hate another..."
"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could;
some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can.
Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a
spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."
-Albert Einstein"Two things are infinte in this world, the universe and human stupidity and I'm
not so sure about the former."
-Albert Einstein
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
It is the source of all true art and science."
- Albert Einstein"This is the way the world ends,
Not with a bang but a whimper."
- T. S. Eliot "The Hollow Men""...the mind is conscious, but conscious of nothing - I said to my soul, be still, and
wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the
love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not
ready for thought: so the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing."
-T.S. Eliot"My life is light, waiting for the death wind,
Like a feather on the back of my hand."
-T. S. Eliot"I am alive. See me bleed."
"Hell is oneself; Hell is alone, the other figures in it
Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from
And nothing to escape to. One is always alone."
-T. S. Eliot Submitted by Meghan"People only see what they are prepared to see."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson"Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who
are willing to admit that they are crazy."
-Nora Ephron"Life is a biochemical reaction to the stimulus of the surrounding environment
in a stableecosphere, while a bowl of cherries is a round container filled with
little read fruits on sticks."
- Of an e-mail I received"Pain of mind is worse than pain of body."
"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith
I am nothing." "But" says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could
not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own
arguments, you don't. QED" "Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and
promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."
-A Friend
"the steel made my tears red..."
-Online Friend"You laugh at me because I am different. I laugh at you because you are all the same."
-Friend"Some people wear their smile like a disguise. Those people who smile a lot -
watch the eyes. I know it cause I'm like that a lot. You think everything's okay,
and it is . . . til it's not."
- Ani DiFranco"Whether you believe you can do a thing or believe you can't, you are right"
- Henry Ford"Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept
no one's definition of your life; define yourself."
-Harvey Fierstein"There's someone in my head but it's not me."
-Pink Floyd, "Brain Damage""There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship, smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying.
When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons.
Now I've got that feeling once again
I can't explain you would not understand
This is not how I am.
I have become comfortably numb."
-Pink Floyd, "Comfortably Numb""Hey you, don't tell me there's no hope at all
Together we stand, divided we fall."
-Pink Floyd, "Hey You""If you wanna find out what's behind these cold eyes You'll just have to claw
your way through this disguise."
-Pink Floyd, "In the Flesh?""Is there anybody out there?"
-Pink Floyd, "Is there Anybody Out There?""I've got a strong urge to fly.
But I got nowhere to fly to."
-Pink Floyd, "Nobody Home""And I can feel one of my turns coming on.
I feel cold as a razor blade,
Tight as a tourniquet,
Dry as a funeral drum."
-Pink Floyd, "One of My Turns""If you should go skating
On the thin ice of modern life
Dragging behind you the silent reproach
Of a million tear-stained eyes
Don't be surprised when a crack in the ice
Appears under your feet.
You slip out of your depth and out of your mind
With your fear flowing out behind you
As you claw the thin ice."
-Pink Floyd, "The Thin Ice""...the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands."
-Anne Frank "The Diary of Anne Frank"
"Live as if your were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."
-Gandhi"A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."
- W. Gagchon"I never said, 'I want to be alone.' I said, 'I want to be left alone.'
There is a world of difference."
- Greta Garbo"I am not a firm beleiver in cause and effect."
-Edwar Gorey"What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?"
- Ursula K. LeGuin"We don't have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is
the mental instatute of the universe."
-Goethe"Death is the only inescapable, unavoidable, sure thing. We are sentenced
to die the day we're born."
-Gary Mark Gilmore"One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude."
-Goethe"You bleed just to know you're alive."
-Goo Goo Dolls, Iris"I drew the blade across my wrist to see how it would feel.
I looked into the future, there was nothing to reveal."
-Goo Goo Dolls, Iris"The world is a masquerade; face, dress, voice, everything is fained.
Everybody decieves and nobody knows anybody."
-Goya"You wanna hear about my new obsession
I'm ridin' high upon a deep depression
I'm only happy when it rains"
- Garbage"A hospital is no place to be sick."
- Samuel Goldwyn"I only smile in the dark,
My only company's the night gone black"
- Garbage
"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the
things we did not do that is inconsolable."
-Sydney J. Harris "Strictly Personal"
"When dealing with the insane, it is best to pretend to be sane."
- Hermann Hesse"I have not trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies all right.
But my damn friends, my God damn friends. They're the ones that keep me
walking the floors at night."
-Warren G. Harding"Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp,
but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you."
-Nathaniel Hawthorne"Every individual has a place to fill in the world, and is important, in some
respect, whether he chooses to be so or not."
-Nathaniel Hawthorne"In the darkest hour the soul is replenished and given
strength to continue and endure."
-Heart Warrior Chosa"Scars are wisdom in disguise."
-Napolean Hill"A meeting between two people who complete each other, who are made for
each other, borders already, in my opinion, on a miracle."
-Adolf Hitler
Submitted by J."What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust over
like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it sags like a heavy load. Or does it just explode?"
-Langston Hughes
Submitted by J."Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly."
-Langston Hughes
"You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad."
-Aldous Huxley"Life is just one damned thing after another."
-Elbert Hubbard"Don't go looking for trouble. Let trouble find you."
-Pearl Harbor
"I have spent nights with matches and knives,
leaning over ledges only two flights up.
Cutting my heart, burning my soul, nothing left to hold.
Nothing left but the blood and the fire."
-Indigo Girls, "Blood and Fire""Don't let the world bring you down, not everyone here is that fucked up and cold,
remember why you came and while ur alive, experience the warmth before you grow cold"
- Incubus"I guess I'm puzzled as to why I have to be in a mental institution.."
- Girl Interrupted
"Ah...don't even think about gettin' inside
Voices in me head...ooh, voices
I got scratches, all over my arms
One for each day, since I fell apart."
-Pearl Jam, "Footsteps"
Submitted by CassieSay goodbye, close your eyes, Remember me"
-Journey"We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not
liberate, it oppresses."
-C. G. Jung, Psychological Reflections
"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of
trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved."
-Helen Keller"It dosn't matter what I want, it dosn't matter what I need, it dosn't matter
if I cry, don't matter if I bleed."
-Alison Krauss"Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming it."
-Helen Keller"Think not I dread to see my spirit fly,
Through the dark gates of fell mortality;
Death has no terrors when the life is true;
'Tis living ill that makes us fear to die."
- Omar Khayyam"A loving person lives in a loving world. A hostile person lives in a hostile
world. Everyone you meet is your mirror."
-Ken Keys"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort,
but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
-Martin Luther King, Jr."Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind."
-Rudyard Kipling
"Insanity -- a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world."
-R. D. Lang"I'm sick to death of reading things by neurotic,psychotic,pig headed politicians.
All I want is some TRUTH,just gimme some TRUTH."
- John Lennon"::sex and drugs and rock 'n roll
speed, weed and godamn birthcontrol
life's a bitch and then you die
so fuck the world and let's get high::"
-Lyrics"What was it about that night?
Connection, in an isolating age
For once, the shadows gave way to light
For once, I didn't disengage"
-Jonathon Larson, RENT"Some fear the dark; I embrace it. It is the only place where my eyes are blind,
and my soul wanders freely from the truth of reality."
-Laura"A Howl Is Merely The Echo Of The Lonely Soul"
-LycanthropicHowl
"When all men think alike, no one thinks very much."
-Watter Lippman"It can't rain all the time."
-Brandon Lee, The Crow"What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?"
-Ursula K. LeGuin"Sitting alone in my own world, by myself, euphoric feelings of floating
far away, slow burning candles, incense, Hendrix, I got my friends."
-Lit, "My World""Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
and things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art; to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul."
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow"The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain."
-Lord Byron"The human heart is like a millstone in a mill; when you put wheat under it,
it turns and grinds and bruises the wheat to flour; if you put no wheat, it still
grinds on - and grinds itself away."
- Luther
"Prick your finger it is done. The moon has now eclipsed the sun. The angel has spread
its wings. The time has come for bitter things."
-Marilyn Manson "Cryptorchid""Just remember when you think you're free, the crack inside your fucking heart is me"
- Marilyn Manson
"Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n"
John Milton, Paradise Lost"Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to
understand, when it is simply necessary to love."
- Claude Monet
"Let's just say I was testing the bounds of society. I was just curious."
-Jim Morrison"I wear black on the outside cos black is what I feel on the inside"
-Morrissey"Theres not much left to love. Too tired today to hate. I feel the empty.
I feel the minute of decay."
-Marilyn Manson "Minute of Decay""The road to hell was paved with good intentions."
-Karl Marx
Submitted by J.
"Where we really want to be is naked, singing in the rainforest, stoned and exalted."
-T.Mckenna"Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy
steals over all the finer senses of the soul."
-Montaigne"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."
- Groucho Marx"Illusions are like umbrellas - you no sooner get them than you lose them, and the
loss always leaves a little painful wound."
-W. Somerset Maugham"Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. "
-H.L. Mencken"After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations."
-H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong."
-H. L. Mencken"More good things in life are lost by indifference than ever were lost by active hostility."
-Robert Gordon Menzies"A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he knows something.'
-Wilson Mizner"There is something terrible yet soothing about returning to a place where you once lived.
You are one of your own memories."
-Mary Morris'Show me a man with head held high, and I'll show you a man who can't get used to bifocals."
-Morse Telegraph Newsletter
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if
you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
-Nietzsche"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star"
- Friedrich Nietzsche"Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings - always darker, emptier and simpler."
-Nietzsche"That which does not kill us makes us stronger."
-Nietzsche
"How did reason come into the world? As is fitting, in an irrational manner, by accident.
One will have to guess at it as at a riddle."
- Nietzsche"I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's real
The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything"
-NIN
"They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who
dream only by night."
-Edgar Allen Poe"How long does getting thin take?"
- Pooh Bear"If wild my breast and sore my pride,
I bask in dreams of suicide,
if cool my heart and high my head
I think "How lucky are the dead"
-Dorothy Parker "Mortal Thoughts""Razors pain you
Rivers are damp
Acids stain you
Drugs cause cramp
Guns aren't lawful
Nooses give
Gas smells awful...
You might as well live."
-Dorothy Parker"Living is entirely too time-consuming."
-Irene Peter"I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.
I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity"
-Sylvia Plath "Elm""What I want back is what I was
"Before the bed, before the knife,
Before the brooch-pin and the salve
Fixed me in this parenthesis;
Horses fluent in the wind,
A place, a time gone out of mind."
-Sylvia Plath "The Eye Mote""The moon is no door,it is a face in its own right
White as a knuckle and terribly upset
it drags the sea after it like a dark crime
it is quiet with the O gape of complete despair
I live here."
-Sylvia Plath
"I do not want a plain box, I want a sarcophagus
With tigery stripes, and a face on it
Round as the moon, to stare up.
I want to be looking at them when they come
Picking among the dumb minerals, the roots.
I see them already-the pale, star-distance faces.
Now they are nothing, they are not even babies.
I imagine them without fathers or mothers, like the first gods.
They will wonder if I was important."
-Sylvia Plath "Last Words""I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I'm here."
-Sylvia Plath "Two Campers in Cloud Country""Dying is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call."
-Sylvia Plath"A dispassionate white sun
shone at the summit of the sky.
I wanted to hone myself on it
until I grew saintly thin and essential
as the blade of a knife."
-Sylvia Plath"Thinking: The talking of the soul with itself."
-Plato"Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow--
You are not wrong who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream."
-Edgar Allan Poe "A Dream Within A Dream""From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone."
-Edgar Allen Poe "Alone""Life is pain. Anyone who tells you something different is selling something."
-"The Princess Bride""I need someone to ease my mind - but sometimes a someone is so hard to find."
-Smashing Pumpkins, "In the Arms of Sleep""You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. "
-Plato
"Sleep is death without the consequence."
-Diana Quinn
Courage doesn't always roar. sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day
saying, 'I will try again tomorrow.'"
-Mary Anne Radmacher-Hershey"I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's real."
-Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more
important than fear."
-Ambrose RedmoonThis is the sound of boots crushing hands.
-Radiohead
"You see things as they are and ask,'why?' I dream things that never were and ask,'why not?'"
-George Bernard Show"To have one's individuality completely ignored is like being pushed quite out of life--like
being blown out as one blows out a light."
-Evelyn Scott"Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt."
-William Shakespeare "Hamlet""All that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity."
-William Shakespeare, "Hamlet""O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!"
-William Shakespeare "Hamlet""The devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape."
-William Shakespeare "Hamlet""For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin, real life. But there
was always some obstacle in the way,...at last I realized that these obstacles WERE my life."
- Alfred D. Souza
"To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 't is nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep:
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,--'t is a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there 's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there 's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels 13 bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action."
-William Shakespeare "Hamlet""My grief lies onward and my joy behind."
-William Shakespeare "Sonnet l""What seest thou else
In the dark backward and abysm of time?"
-Shakespeare "The Tempest""This above all; to thine own self be true."
-William Shakespeare"We know what we are, but know not what we may be."
-William Shakespeare"You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try."
-Beverly Sills"Reality Is What You Make Of It, There is No excape to What you Create."
-Song"Liberate the people that you hate and cut yourself again."
-Silverchair"I drew the blade across my wrist to see how it would feel.
I looked into the future, there was nothing to reveal."
-Strawbs, Round and Round"Pain of mind is worse than pain of body."
-Syrus
Submitted by Kathy"Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them."
-Charles Simic"Death - the last sleep? No, it is the final awakening."
- Walter Scott"Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly."
-Another song"Sometimes sanity takes vacation time on me."
- Savage Garden"Those people who say that to seek death is a sin do not know the despair and sadness
that goes hand in hand with true loneliness."
- Amanda Shepherd"...and I've come here to confess through the wind and the rain and the glorious pain..."
-From some song"Jesus Christ might simply have returned to his carpentry following the use of modern
psychiatric treatments."
- British psychiatrist William Sargant, 1974
"We know what we are, but know not what we may be."
- William Shakespeare"The moments we forego eternity itself cannot retrieve."
- Schiller
"I'm living but I'm feeling numb.Can see it in my stare.I wear a mask so falsely numb and
I don't know who I am."
-This Mortal Coil "Tarantula"Knowing others is wisdom;
Knowing the self is enlightenment;
Mastering others requires force;
Mastering the self needs strength.
-Lao-Tzu"In the beginning, there was nothing. Then God said ‘Let there be light', and there was
still nothing, but you could see it."
- Dave Thomas, SCTVI hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've
always worked for me.
-Hunter S. ThompsonNoise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she
had laid an asteroid.
-Mark TwainThey spell it Vinci and pronounce it Vinchy. Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.
-Mark Twain"The greatest evils, are from within us;
and from ourselves also we must look for our greatest good."
- Jeremy Taylor"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
-Dylan Thomas"Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant intelligence."
-Henrik Tikkanen"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do
that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
-Mark Twain"Why should I live? Why should I do anything?
Is there in life any purpose which the inevitable death does not undo and destroy?"
-Tolstoy
"There's only one way of life and that's your own"
-Unknown"I don't want to be everything to everyone, but I would like to be something to someone."
-Unknown"The past that is yet to come may not yet come for some..."
-UnknownWhen there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.
-Unknown"Although elementary and hard task,
turning negatives into positives is the
best foundation to having a happy life."
-Unknown"When will people understand that words can cut as sharply as any blade, and that those
cuts leave scars upon our souls."
-Unknown"I always hated mandatory activities, but I enjoyed life, until I realized that life is just
one of them and I started hating it as well. "
-Unknown"Why do anything when you can forget everything?"
-Unknown"If tears could wash my body my tears would make me clean."
-Unknown
"There comes a time when you look into the mirror and realize that what you see is
all that you will ever be. Then you accept it, or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking into mirrors."
-Unknown"Lifes a bitch, then you die"
-UnknownWhy run if you don't know where you're going?
- Unknown"It's better to be hated for who you are than to be loved for who you arr not"
-Unknown"If you don't want anyone to get your goat, don't let them know where you have it tied."
-Unknown"Sometimes in our confusion, we see not the world as it is, but the world though
eyes blurred by the mind."
-Unknown"Never give up cause you never know what will happen around the next corner"
-Unknown"In this life there is bullshit and there is unesessary bullshit; lose the unesessary"
-Unknown"Life is like a big rollarcoaster, when you reach the top of a hill you find your self
speeding downward into another seemingly bottomless abyss."
- Unknown
"Go and do what you want, be who you are...cause when you die, they're not going
to carve anything into your gravestone about your sensible job"
-Unknown"No-ones a virgin...life screws us all"
-Unknown
"Dying is easy It's living that scares me to death."
-Unknown"There are no words that can appease my pain."
-Unknown
"When will people understand that words can cut as sharply as any blade, and that
those cuts leave scars upon our souls?"
-Unknown"Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant intelligence."
-Unknown
"I wish they would only take me as I am."
-Vincent Van Gogh "Dear Theo: Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh""Is something wrong?" she said. "Of course there is." "You're still alive," she said.
"Do I deserve to be?" Is that the question? And if so, who answers?
-Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam"Spring is almost here. Already the trees are starting to blossom with kites."
-Bill Vaughan"The typical American today is a graduate of a multiversity who lives in a megalopolis,
works for a conglomerate, and feels lonesome".
-Bill Vaughan"Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands -
and then eat just one of the pieces."
-Judith Viorst"All persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental, and should not be construed. "
-Kurt Vonnegut
"Life is all in perception...Do you see what I see?"
-D.W."And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand,
The hand that held the steel:
For only blood can wipe out blood,
And only tears can heal."
- Oscar Wilde"Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory."
-Tennessee Williams"And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand,
The hand that held the steel:
For only blood can wipe out blood,
And only tears can heal."
-Oscar Wilde "The Ballad of Reading Gaol""If you take someone's thoughts and feelings away, bit by bit, consistantly, they then have
nothing left except some gritty, gnawing, shitty little instinct, down there, somewhere,
worming around in the gut, but so far down, so hidden, it's impossible to find."
-Elizabeth Wurtzel "Prozac Nation""You don't even have to hate to have a perfectly miserable time."
-Elizabeth Wurtzel "Prozac Nation""I guess the cutting began when I started to spend my lunch period hiding in the girls'
locker room, scared to death of everybody around me. I would bring my functional
black and silver Panasonic, meant for voice recording and not music, and I would
listen intently to the scratchy sounds of the tapes I'd accumulated, mostly popular hard
rock like Foreigner, which, trashy as it was, sounded like liberation to me. I'd sit
there with my tape recorder, eating cottage cheese and pineapples from a stout thermos
I brought from home (I was, by this time, also certain that I was fat), and it was a peaceful
relief from having to deal with other people, whether they were teachers or friends.
Every so often, I would sit in the locker room on the floor, leaning against the concrete
wall while my tape recorder sat on the bench, and I would fantasize about going back
to the person I had always been. The reverse transformation couldn't be that much of a
leap. I could just try talking to people again. I could get the astonished look off my face,
as if my eyes had just been exposed to a terrible glare. I could laugh a bit. I would imagine
myself doing the things I once did, like playing tennis. Every so often I would make a
decision, first thing in the morning as I headed out the door for the school bus, that I was
going to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed that day; I would be friendly, I would smile, I would
raise my hand in math class from time to time. I remember those days, because I could see
how my friends got this look of relief on their faces. I would walk toward them, standing in
a huddle in the blue-carpeted hall outside of the classroom, and they would half expect me
to say something like 'Everything's plastic, we're all gonna die' and instead I would just
say, Good Morning, And suddenly, their bodies would relax, their shoulders would drop
comfortably, and sometimes they would even say, Oh wow, you're the old Lizzy again, kind
of like a parent who has finally accepted that his oldest son has become a Shiite Muslim
and is moving to Iran when, suddenly, the kid returns home and announces that he wants to
go to law school after all. My friends, and my mother for that matter, would be relieved to
find that I was more the me they wanted me to be. The trouble was, I thought this alternative
persona I had adopted was just that: a put-on, a way of getting attention, a way of being
different. And maybe when I first started walking around talking about plastic and death,
maybe then it was an experiment. But after a while, the alternative me really just was me.
Those days that I tried to be the little girl I was supposed to be drained me. I went home
at night and cried for hours because so many people in my life expecting me to be a certain
way was too much pressure, as if I'd been held against a wall and interrogated for hours,
asked questions I couldn't quite answer any longer. I remember being in a panic one day at
school when I realized that I could not even fake being the old Lizzy anymore. I had, indeed,
metamorphosed into this nihilistic, unhappy girl. Just like Gregor Samsa waking up to find
he'd become a six foot long roach, only in my case, I had invented the monster and now it
was overtaking me. This was what I'd come to. This was what I'd be for the rest of my life.
Things were bad now and would get worse later. They would. I had not heard the word
depression yet, and would not for some time after that, but I felt something very wrong
going on. I felt that I was wrong - my hair was wrong, my face was wrong, my personality
was wrong - my God, my choice of flavors at the Haagan Dazs shop after school was wrong!
How could I walk around with such pasty white skin, such dark, doleful eyes, such straight
anemic hair, such round hips and such a small clinched waist? How could I let anybody see
me this way? How could I expose other people to my person, to this bane to the world? I
was one big mistake. And so, sitting in the locker room, petrified that I was doomed to
spend my life hiding from people this way, I took my keys out of my knapsack. On the chain
was a sharp nail clipper, which had a nail file attached to it. I rolled down my knee socks
(we were required to wear skirts to school) and looked at my bare white legs. I hadn't really
started shaving yet, only from time to time because my mother considered me too young,
and I looked at the delicate peach fuzz, still soft and untainted. A perfect, clean canvas.
So I took the nail file, found its sharp edge, and ran it across my lower leg, watching a red
line of blood appear across my skin. I was surprised at how straight the line was and at how
easy it was for me to hurt myself in this way. It was almost fun. I was always the sort to pick
scabs and peel sunburned skin in sheets off my shoulders, always pestering my body. This
was just the next step. And how much more satisfying it was to muck up my own body than
relying on mosquitoes and walks in the country among thorny bushes to do it for me. I made
a few more scratches, alternating between legs, this time moving the file more quickly, less
cautiously. I did not, you see, want to kill myself. Not at that time, anyway. But I wanted to
know that if need be, if the desperation got so terribly bad, I could inflict harm on my body.
And I could. Knowing this gave me a sense of peace and power, so I started cutting up my
legs all the time. Hiding the scars from my mother became a sport of its own. I collected
razor blades, I bought a Swiss Army knife, I became fascinated with different kinds of sharp
edges and the different cutting sensations they produced. I tried out different shapes - squares,
triangles, pentagons, even an awkwardly carved heart, with a stab wound at its center, wanting
to see if it hurt the way a real broken heart could hurt. I was amazed and pleased to find that it
didn't."
-Elizabeth Wurtzel "Prozac Nation"
"If they know nothing of victory, then at least they are spared the knowledge of defeat"
-Oscar Wilde"Once upon a time they called me the Bleeder..."
- WallFlowers"The Meaning Of Life: The reason that we're all here is that it was too crowded where we
were supposed to go."
-Steven Wright"The thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never any good to oneself. "
-Oscar Wilde"A secret is what you tell someone else not to tell because you can't keep it to yourself. "
-Webster's Unafraid Dictionary"Miracles sometimes occur, but one has to work terribly hard for them."
-Chaim Weizmann'If only we'd stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time. "
-Edith WhartonBlade is sharp. Keep out of children.
-Warning on knife"The difference between news and gossip lies in whether you raise your voice or lower it.'
-The Wall Street Journal
"If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done."
- Naido Xavier
"Personality is born out of pain. It is the fire shut up in the flint."
-J. B. Yeats "Letters to His Son, W. B. Yeats and Others"
Do you have any quotes you want to add? Just e-mail them to Catatonia.
