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.
Elena Ferrante
Quotes to Explore
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.
C. Vivian Stringer
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.
Vincent Van Gogh
Thoughts are to the Desires as Scouts and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired.
Thomas Hobbes
To many men much-wandering hope comes as a boon, but to many others it is the deception of vain desires.
Sophocles
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.
Socrates
Some have courage in pleasures, and some in pains: some in desires, and some in fears, and some are cowards under the same conditions.
Socrates
Freedom is secured not by the fulfillment of one's desires, but by the removal of desire.
Epictetus
I don't feel any vulgar gratitude to you[for helping me]. I almost feel as if You ought to be grateful to ME, for giving you the opportunity of enjoying the luxury of generosity. . . I may have come into the world expressly for the purpose of increasing your stock of happiness. I may have been born to be a benefactor to you, by giving you an opportunity of assisting me.
Charles Dickens
I don't doubt that every prince would like to be both; but since it is hard to accomodate these qualities, if you have to make a choice, to be feared is much safer than to be loved. For it is a good general rule about men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, liars, and deceivers, fearful of danger and greedy for gain....[love] is a link of obligation which men, because they are rotten, will break anything they think doing so serves their advantage; but fear involves dread of punishment, from which they can never escape.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
Our agreements on creating the conditions for preparing a peace treaty [with Japan] should be rooted in this trust. This may be achieved, for example, by large-scale economic activities that will also cover the Kuril Islands. It may be achieved by solving purely humanitarian issues, for instance, unhindered visa-free travel by former residents of the Southern Kuril Islands to where they used to live: visiting cemeteries, native places and so on.
Vladimir Putin
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.
Elena Ferrante