Elena Ferrante Quotes
Lila always knew what she wanted and got it; I don’t want anything, I’m made of nothing. I hoped to wake in the morning without desires. Once I was emptied—I imagined—the affection of Antonio, my affection for him will be enough.
Quotes to Explore
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You can love more than one person in your life, but things will be different. There'll be a different dynamic. Needs and desires change.
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If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.
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The hardest of all is learning to be a well of affection, and not a fountain; to show them we love them not when we feel like it, but when they do.
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When someone fears losing your affection, he or she will strive to keep it. Perhaps you have strived to keep someone's affection, too. Fear of loss is not love.
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Your desires will source you with the inspiration to release your outdated beliefs and let go of whatever behavior is keeping you stuck in the past.
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Riches don't respond to wishes. They respond only to definite plans, backed by definite desires, through constant persistence.
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There are two sorts of affection – the love of a woman you respect, and the love for the woman you love.
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The choicest thing this world has for a man is affection.
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Much is being said about peace; and no man desires peace more ardently than I. Still I am yet unprepared to give up the Union fora peace which, so achieved, could not be of much duration.
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Young men have strong passions and tend to gratify them indiscriminately. Of the bodily desires, it is the sexual by which they are most swayed and in which they show absence of control...They are changeable and fickle in their desires which are violent while they last, but quickly over: their impulses are keen but not deep rooted.
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I came to Rutgers to try to build Rutgers to become the jewel of the East. I really think a lot of people got bent out of shape thinking that we claimed to be the jewel of the East. I don't know where you're going to get 'jewel' when you are undiscovered and unpolished. What we hoped to do was become the jewel of the East. I think anybody who loves competition has to appreciate someone who is going to push the envelope a little bit in terms of competing.
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Do you know what makes the prison disappear? Every deep, genuine affection. Being friends, being brothers, loving, that is what opens the prison, with supreme power, by some magic force. Without these one stays dead. But whenever affection is revived, there life revives.
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Thoughts are to the Desires as Scouts and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired.
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To many men much-wandering hope comes as a boon, but to many others it is the deception of vain desires.
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Wars and revolutions and battles are due simply and solely to the body and its desires. All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service.
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Some have courage in pleasures, and some in pains: some in desires, and some in fears, and some are cowards under the same conditions.
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Freedom is secured not by the fulfillment of one's desires, but by the removal of desire.
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Touch is the alpha and omega of affection.
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If your opponent has a conscience, then follow Gandhi and nonviolence. But if your enemy has no conscience like Hitler, then follow Bonhoeffer.
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Treat the large as the small and the few as the many.
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I want to live and work in Chicago for the rest of my life. You know when you were growing up and you wanted to become president? What I want now is to be mayor of this damned town in ten years.
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A useless life is an early death. [Ger., Ein unnutz Leben ist ein fruher Tod.]
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Lila always knew what she wanted and got it; I don’t want anything, I’m made of nothing. I hoped to wake in the morning without desires. Once I was emptied—I imagined—the affection of Antonio, my affection for him will be enough.
