Quotes from books
(page 3)
You're beautiful, but you're empty... No one could die for you.
Only children know what they are looking for.
I know a planet where there is a certain red-faced gentleman. He had never smelled a flower. He has never looked at a star. He has never loved any one. He has never done anything in his life but add up figures.
All humanity could be piled up on a small Pacific islet. The grown-ups, to be sure, will not believe you when you tell them that. They imagine that they fill a great deal of space. They fancy themselves as important as the baobabs. You should advise them, then, to make their own calculations. They adore figures, and that will please them.
A man cannot realize that above such shattered bodies there are still human faces in which life goes its daily round. And this is only one hospital, a single station; there are hundreds of thousands in Germany, hundreds of thousands in France, hundreds of thousands in Russia. How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when such things are possible. It must be all lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is.
Our thoughts are clay, they are moulded with the changes of the days; when we are resting they are good; under fire, they are dead. Fields of craters within and without.
We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war.
I am very fond of sunsets. Come, let us go look at a sunset...
It is truly useful since it is beautiful.
That is the remarkable thing about drinking: it brings people together so quickly, but between night and morning it sets an interval again of years.
We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.
When you've finished getting yourself ready in the morning, you must go get the planet ready.
When he lights his street lamp, it is as if he brought one more star to life, or one flower. When he puts out his lamp, he sends the flower, or the star, to sleep. That is a beautiful occupation. And since it is beautiful, it is truly useful.
Life is a disease, brother, and death begins already at birth. Every breath, every heartbeat, is a moment of dying - a little shove toward the end.
Give 'em all the same grub and all the same pay
And the war would be over and done in a day.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
Draw me a sheep!
One never knows!
My further advice on your relations to women is based upon that other motto of chivalry, «Serve all, love one».
Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure.
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