Escritas — Quotes

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!

1

Charles Baudelaire

I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old. 5

1

Carlos Fuentes

One wants to tell a story, like Scheherazade, in order not to die. It’s one of the oldest urges of mankind. It’s a way of stalling death.

William Shakespeare

I must become a borrower of the night For a dark hour or twain.

William Shakespeare

I saw young Harry, with his beaver on.

Leonardo da Vinci

The discovery of a good wine is increasingly better for mankind than the discovery of a new star.

John Dryden

What passion cannot Music raise and quell?

1

Aristóteles

The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

1

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

On that green light that lingers in the west: I may not hope from outward forms to win The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.

1

Charles Baudelaire

I am the wound and the knife! I am the blow and the cheek! I am the limbs and the wheel— The victim and the executioner! 6

1

Isabel Allende

Write to register history.

Wallace Stevens

Twenty men crossing a bridge, Into a village, Are twenty men crossing twenty bridges, Into twenty villages, Or one man Crossing a single bridge into a village.

1

William Shakespeare

To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus And witch the world with noble horsemanship.

Leonardo da Vinci

Such is the supreme folly of man that he labours so as to labour no more.

John Dryden

The trumpet’s loud clangor Excites us to arms.

1

Ursula K. Le Guin

There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.

1

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

O lady! we receive but what we give And in our life alone does Nature live.

1

Charles Baudelaire

Here is the charming evening, the criminal’s friend; It comes like an accomplice, with stealthy tread. 7

Albert Camus

It is immoral not to tell.

1

William Shakespeare

To be thus is nothing; But to be safely thus.

William Shakespeare

Worse than the sun in March This praise doth nourish agues.

1

Leonardo da Vinci

Medicine is the restoration of discordant elements; sickness is the discord of the elements infused into the living body.

John Dryden

The soft complaining flute, In dying notes, discovers The woes of hopeless lovers.

1

Aristóteles

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud Enveloping the earth.

1

Charles Baudelaire

What is that sad, dark island?—It is Cythera, They tell us, a country famous in song, Banal Eldorado of all the old bachelors. Look! after all, it is a poor land! 8

4

Dylan Thomas

There is always one right word; use it, despite its foul or merely ludicrous associations.

Wallace Stevens

The book of moonlight is not written yet.

2

William Shakespeare

Doomsday is near; die all, die merrily.

Leonardo da Vinci

Life well spent is long.

John Dryden

The trumpet shall be heard on high The dead shall live, the living die, And Music shall untune the sky!

1

Alan Watts

...[W]ords can be communicative only between those who share similar experiences.

1

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Joy is the sweet voice, joy the luminous cloud— We in ourselves rejoice! And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, All melodies the echoes of that voice, All colors a suffusion from that light.

Charles Baudelaire

O Death, old captain, it is time! raise the anchor! 9

1

George Orwell

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

William Shakespeare

Murderer: We are men, my liege. Macbeth: Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men.

William Shakespeare

To the latter end of a fray and the beginning of a feast Fits a dull fighter and a keen guest.

Leonardo da Vinci

He turns not back who is bound to a star.

John Dryden

Of all the tyrannies on human kind The worst is that which persecutes the mind.

Aristóteles

Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.

1

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Trochee trips from long to short; From long to long in solemn sort Slow Spondee stalks.

1

Charles Baudelaire

Be charming, and shut up! 10

1

Toni Cade Bambara

Words are to be taken seriously. I try to take seriously acts of language. Words set things in motion. I’ve seen them doing it. Words set up atmospheres, electrical fields, charges. I’ve felt them doing it. Words conjure. I try not to be careless about what I utter, write, sing. I’m careful about what I give voice to.

2

Wallace Stevens

And as he came he saw that it was spring, A time abhorrent to the nihilist Or searcher for the fecund minimum.

1

William Shakespeare

Greatness knows itself.

Leonardo da Vinci

Depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves.

John Dryden

And kind as kings upon their coronation day.

1

Ursula K. Le Guin

If you evade suffering you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get, or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled. You will not know what it is to come home.

1