Profound Words

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“You know, we thank some people for merely living at the same time as we do. I thank you for the fact that I met you, that I will remember you for all my life!”

—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

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“how paradoxical it is to seek in reality for the pictures that are stored in one’s memory”

—Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time Volume 1: The Way by Swann's

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“The places we have known do not belong only to the world of space on which we map them for our own convenience. They were only a thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that composed our life at that time; the memory of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years.”

—Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time Volume 1: The Way by Swann's

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“When we are sad—at least I am like this—it can be comforting to cling to familiar objects, to the things that don’t change.”

—James Hobart (Hobie), The Goldfinch

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“Both life and death manifest in every moment of existence. Our human body appears and disappears moment by moment, without cease, and this ceaseless arising and passing away is what we experience as time and being. They are not separate. They are one thing, and in even a fraction of a second, we have the opportunity to choose, and to turn the course of our action either toward the attainment of truth or away from it. Each instant is utterly critical to the whole world.

When I think of this, I am both cheered and saddened. Cheered at the thought of the many instants that arise and are available to do good in the world. Saddened by all the misspent moments that have piled on top of each other and led us to this war.”

—Yasutani Haruki #1, A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

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“Most human activities are predicated on the assumption that life goes on. If you take that premise away, what is there left?”

—Haruki Murakami, Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

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“Time is too conceptual. Not that it stops us from filling it in. So much so, we can’t even tell whether our experiences belong to time or to the world of physical things.”

—Haruki Murakami, Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

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“Fate picks you out. And ’ere we be, always passing judgement – that’s not right, doesn’t suit us. Our ’appiness, me dear, be like water in a dragnet. Swells out lovely when you pulls; take it out and it’s empty. Yes, that’s the way things be.”

—Platon Karatayev, War and Peace

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“War is not being nice to each other, it’s the vilest thing in human life, and we ought to understand that and not play at war. It’s a terrible necessity, and we should be strict about it and take it seriously. It comes down to this: no more lying, war means war and it’s not a plaything. Otherwise war will be a nice hobby for idle people and butterfly minds.”

—Prince Andrey Bolkonsky, War and Peace

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“If we didn’t have all this business of magnanimity in warfare, we would only ever go to war when there was something worth facing certain death for.”

—Prince Andrey Bolkonsky, War and Peace

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“believe that our life is not only here and now on this little patch of earth, but we have lived before and shall live for ever out there in the wholeness of things.”

—Count Pierre Bezukhov, War and Peace

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“I feel I can never disappear because nothing disappears in the whole universe.”

—Count Pierre Bezukhov, War and Peace

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“and never forget that, until the day when God deigns to unveil the future to mankind, all human wisdom is contained in these two words: ‘wait’ and ‘hope’!”

—Count of Monte Cristo, The Count of Monte Cristo

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“Only someone who has suffered the deepest misfortune is capable of experiencing the heights of felicity. Maximilien, you must needs have wished to die, to know how good it is to live.”

—Count of Monte Cristo, The Count of Monte Cristo

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“Yes, no doubt, it does hurt, if you brutally shatter the mortal envelope when it is crying out to live.”

—Count of Monte Cristo, The Count of Monte Cristo

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“Unless an evil thought is born in a twisted mind, human nature is repelled by crime. However, civilization has given us needs, vices and artificial appetites which sometimes cause us to repress our good instincts and lead us to wrongdoing.”

—Abbé Faria, The Count of Monte Cristo

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