Words of Wisdom From Literature & Poetry

The trouble with thinking was that, once you started, you went on doing it.

'Sarge?' 'Yes, Nobby?' 'You know your teeth...' 'What teeth?' 'The teeth like in your mouth?' 'Oh, right. Yep. What about 'em?' 'How come they fit together at the back?' There was a pause while Sergeant Colon prodded the recesses of his mouth with his tongue. 'It uh ah–' he began, and untangled himself. 'Interesting observation, Nobby.'

...if people went around noticing everything that was going on all the time, no one would ever get anything done.

Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that - I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much - so very much to learn.

Ask me, then, if I believe in the spirit of the things as they were used, and I'll say yes. They're all here. All the things which had uses. All the mountains which had names. And we'll never be able to use them without feeling uncomfortable. And somehow the mountains will never sound right to us; we'll give them new names, but the old names are there, somewhere in time, and the mountains were shaped and seen under those names. The names we'll give to the canals and mountains and cities will fall like so much water on the back of a mallard. No matter how we touch Mars, we'll never touch it. And then we'll get mad at it, and you know what we'll do? We'll rip it up, rip the skin off, and change it to fit ourselves.

'We're all fools,' said Clemens, 'all the time. It's just we're a different kind each day. We think, I'm not a fool today. I've learned my lesson. I was a fool yesterday but not this morning. Then tomorrow we find out that, yes, we were a fool today too. I think the only way we can grow and get on in this world is to accept the fact we're not perfect and live accordingly.'

I wonder if it matters that what they have aimed at is illusion. Their lives are in themselves beautiful. I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.

It's never too late to turn back if you make a wrong turn. Even if it takes you a decade to backtrack, you must do it. Don't get stuck because the road seems too long or too dark. Don't be afraid to have nothing.

In the centre of the room were two giant cardboard boxes, the kind refrigerators come packed in. On the box to the left, in the Perfectionist's handwriting, was the word FRIEND. On the box to the right was the word LOVER. The two boxes were the only objects in the room. Tom looked at the Perfectionist. The Perfectionist looked at him. Tom looked back to the boxes and then back at the Perfectionist. He scratched his head. "Well?" the Perfectionist asked. "which one?" She moved her arms, suggesting he should get in one. Tom walked into the room and stood between the two boxes. He looked at the one marked LOVER and he looked at the one marked FRIEND. He made his decision quickly. With sharp steps he moved in front of the box marked FRIEND. Picking it up, he lived it over his head and put it inside the box named LOVER. Then he turned around, picked up the Perfectionist, and lifted her inside the boxes. He climbed in with her.

It doesn't matter what your job is, or how much money you've got, or how many people you employ or have power over, or even how often you wash your hair or what clothes you wear - what matters are the books you read, and the thoughts you have and being true to yourself, whoever you are. I've never bought into that corporate bullshit of going to university so you can get a good job and move to London and spend all your money on rent and lunch and tights just so you can feel important. I like being down to earth. I've always been like that but meeting you made me realise I'm not a freak, and that it's OK.

Loneliness is not longing for company, it is a longing for kind. And kind means people who can see you who you are, and that means they have enough intelligence and sensitivity and patience to do that. It also means they can accept you, because we don’t see what we can’t accept, we blot it out, we jam it hastly in one stereotypic box or another.

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.