Quotes

Solvitur ambulando: the solution to the problem of walking is–walking. The only way to do it is–to do it. The key to this paradox is the mystery of Grace. Here action and thought reached their end and repose.

Oliver Sacks, A Leg to Stand On

Evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart.

Yann Martel, Life of Pi

Life is a peephole, a single tiny entry onto a vastness–how can I not dwell on this brief, cramped view I have of things?

Yann Martel, Life of Pi

It is an error to imagine that fate can be exhausted, and that one has reached the bottom of anything whatever.

Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Rainer Maria Rilke

 For those who are still disposed to proceed I will only underline the quality common to the three experiences; it is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and from Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again. Apart from that, and considered only in its quality, it might almost equally well be called a particular kind of unhappiness or grief. But then it is a kind we want. I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and pleasure often is.

C.S. Lewis

Creating a new theory is not like destroying an old barn and erecting a skyscraper in its place. It is rather like climbing a mountain, gaining new and wider views…But the point from which we started still exists.

Albert Einstein, The Evolution of Physics

The reason death sticks so closely to life isn’t bioloigcal necessity — it’s envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.

Yann Martel, Life of Pi

Don’t let your morale flag. Be daunted, but not defeated. Remember: the spirit, above all else, counts. If you have the will to live, you will. Good luck!

Yann Martel, Life of Pi

Contemporary admiration is nothing but short-sightedness.

Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

How does the never to be differ from what never was?

Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Do you wish to catch a glimpse of God? Look intently at creation.

Anthony de Mello, The Song of the Bird

We have to find a new view of the world that has to agree with everything that is known, but disagrees in its predictions somewhere, otherwise it is not interesting…if the business of physics is ever finished, the world will be a much less interesting place in which to live.

John Gribbin, In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat

Any extrapolation of history into the future pressuposes an environment of static discovery–an oxymoron.

Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies