Aleister Crowley II

I'm a poet, and I like my lies the way my mother used to make them.

One would go mad if one took the Bible seriously; but to take it seriously one must be already mad.

May the New Year bring you courage to break your resolutions early! My own plan is to swear off every kind of virtue, so that I triumph even when I fall

I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.

The joy of life consists in the exercise of one's energies, continual growth, constant change, the enjoyment of every new experience. To stop means simply to die. The eternal mistake of mankind is to set up an attainable ideal.

Every one interprets everything in terms of his own experience. If you say anything which does not touch a precisely similar spot in another man's brain, he either misunderstands you, or doesn't understand you at all.

Having to talk destroys the symphony of silence.

The sin which is unpardonable is knowingly and wilfully to reject truth, to fear knowledge lest that knowledge pander not to thy prejudices.

Boris Pasternak II

I don't think I could love you so much if you had nothing to complain of and nothing to regret. I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and of little value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.

How wonderful to be alive, he thought. But why does it always hurt?

When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it. 

About dreams. It is usually taken for granted that you dream of something that has made a particularly strong impression on you during the day, but it seems to me it´s just the contrary. Often it´s something you paid no attention to at the time -- a vague thought that you didn´t bother to think out to the end, words spoken without feeling and which passed unnoticed -- these are the things that return at night, clothed in flesh and blood, and they become the subjects of dreams, as if to make up for having been ignored during waking hours.

To be a woman is a great adventure;
To drive men mad is a heroic thing.

They loved each other, not driven by necessity, by the "blaze of passion" often falsely ascribed to love. They loved each other because everything around them willed it, the trees and the clouds and the sky over their heads and the earth under their feet.

You and I, it's as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together, to see if we know what we were taught.

Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.

Federico García Lorca II

To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.

To see you naked is to recall the Earth.

But hurry, let's entwine ourselves as one, our mouth broken, our soul bitten by love, so time discovers us safely destroyed.

I've often lost myself,
in order to find the burn that keeps everything awake

The artist, and particularly the poet, is always an anarchist in the best sense of the word. He must heed only the call that arises within him from three strong voices: the voice of death, with all its foreboding, the voice of love and the voice of art.

I know there is no straight road 
No straight road in this world 
Only a giant labyrinth 
Of intersecting crossroads

Today in my heart
a vague trembling of stars
and all roses are
as white as my pain.

As I have not worried to be born, I do not worry to die.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Though [Abraham Lincoln] never would travel to Europe, he went with Shakespeare’s kings to Merry England; he went with Lord Byron poetry to Spain and Portugal. Literature allowed him to transcend his surroundings.

Once a president gets to the White House, the only audience that is left that really matters is history.

Good leadership requires you to surround yourself with people of diverse perspectives who can disagree with you without fear of retaliation.

An adult friend of Lincoln's: "Life was to him a school.

With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition,” he wrote. “I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.

Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country - bigger than all the Presidents together.
We are still too near to his greatness,' (Leo) Tolstoy (in 1908) concluded, 'but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.' 

Maggie Stiefvater

You're beautiful and sad," I said finally, not looking at him when I did. "Just like your eyes. You're like a song that I heard when I was a little kid but forgot I knew until I heard it again." For a long moment there was only the whirring sound of the tires on the road, and then Sam said softly, "Thank you.”

It is possible to be in love with you just because of who you are.

What do you eat?"
"Baby bunnies." She narrowed her eyes, so I grinned and said, "Adult bunnies, too. I'm an equal-opportunity bunny-eater.

My words are unerring tools of destruction, and I’ve come unequipped with the ability to disarm them.

Books are more real when you read them outside.

You're like a song that I heard when I was a little kid but forgot I knew until I heard it again.

She wasn't interested in telling other people's futures. She was interested in going out and finding her own.

Nicholson Baker

I woke up thinking a very pleasant thought. There is lots left in the world to read.

Books: a beautifully browsable invention that needs no electricity and exists in a readable form no matter what happens.

But spending your life concentrating on death is like watching a whole movie and thinking only about the credits that are going to roll at the end. It’s a mistake of emphasis.

You can tell it's a poem because it's swimming in a little gel pack of white space. That shows it's a poem.

You need the art in order to love the life.

Poetry is prose in slow motion.

Carpe diem' doesn't mean seize the day--it means something gentler and more sensible. 'Carpe diem' means pluck the day. Carpe, pluck. Seize the day would be "cape diem," if my school Latin servies. No R. Very different piece of advice. What Horace had in mind was that you should gently pull on the day's stem, as if it were, say, a wildflower or an olive, holding it with all the practiced care of your thumb and the side of your finger, which knows how to not crush easily crushed things--so that the day's stalk or stem undergoes increasing tension and draws to a thinness, and a tightness, and then snaps softly away at its weakest point, perhaps leaking a little milky sap, and the flower, or the fruit, is released in your hand. 

Jennifer Donnelly

Together in our house, in the firelight, we are the world made small.

Right now I want a word that describes the feeling that you get--a cold sick feeling, deep down inside--when you know something is happening that will change you, and you don't want it to, but you can't stop it. And you know, for the first time, for the very first time, that there will now be a before and an after, a was and a will be. And that you will never again quite be the same person you were.

Life’s all about the revolution, isn’t it? The one inside, I mean. You can’t change history. You can’t change the world. All you can ever change is yourself.

I know it is a bad thing to break a promise, but I think now that it is a worse thing to let a promise break you.

I don't like hope very much. In fact, I hate it. It's the crystal meth of emotions. It hooks you fast and kills you hard. It's bad news. The worst. It's sharp sticks and cherry bombs. When hope shows up, it's only a matter of time until someone gets hurt.

I'm wishing he could see that music lives. Forever. That it's stronger than death. Stronger than time. And that its strength holds you together when nothing else can.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.

There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.

Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle.

A lie told often enough becomes the truth.

Without Revolutionary theory, there can be no Revolutionary Movement.

Give me just one generation of youth, and I'll transform the whole world.

Can a nation be free if it oppresses other nations? It cannot.

Sometimes - history needs a push.

The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.

Unity is a great thing and a great slogan. But what the workers’ cause needs is the unity of Marxists, not unity between Marxists, and opponents and distorters of Marxism.

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.

Michelle Hodkin

Thinking something does not make it true. Wanting something does not make it real.

If I were to live a thousand years, I would belong to you for all of them. If we were to live a thousand lives, I would want to make you mine in each one.

What would you do if I kissed you right now?"
I stared at his beautiful face and his beautiful mouth and I wanted nothing more than to taste it. "I would kiss you back.

This was the boy I loved. A little bit messy. A little bit ruined. A beautiful disaster. Just like me.

You're the girl who called me an asshole the first time we spoke. The girl who tried to pay for lunch even after you learned I have more money than God. You're the girl who risked her ass to save a dying dog, who makes my chest ache whether you're wearing green silk or ripped jeans. You're the girl that I--" Noah stopped, then took a step closer to me. "You are my girl.

Everyone is a little crazy. The only difference between us and them is that they hide it better.

You’re stronger than you believe. Don’t let your fear own you. Own yourself.

Pete Seeger

Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't. 

Any darn fool can make something complex; it takes a genius to make something simple.

If it can’t be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled or composted, then it should be restricted, redesigned or removed from production.

Participation - that's what's gonna save the human race.

Well, normally I’m against big things. I think the world is going to be saved by millions of small things. Too many things can go wrong when they get big.

The American Indians were Communists. They were. Every anthropologist will tell you they were Communists. No rich, no poor. If somebody needed something the community chipped in.

Once upon a time, wasn’t singing a part of everyday life as much as talking, physical exercise, and religion? Our distant ancestors, wherever they were in this world, sang while pounding grain, paddling canoes, or walking long journeys. Can we begin to make our lives once more all of a piece? Finding the right songs and singing them over and over is a way to start. And when one person taps out a beat, while another leads into the melody, or when three people discover a harmony they never knew existed, or a crowd joins in on a chorus as though to raise the ceiling a few feet higher, then they also know there is hope for the world.