Less - Quotes
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow -
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
When you have nothing to say, say nothing; a weak defence strengthens your opponent, and silence is less injurious than a bad reply.
If life in itself were a valuable possession and decidedly preferable to non-existence, the gate need not be occupied by such terrible guards as death and its terrors. But who would persevere in life as it is, if death were less frightful? And who could even so much as endure the thought of death, if life were a joy?
To be good is noble, but to teach others how to be good is nobler and less trouble.
Love is irrational [...]. The more you loved someone, the less sense anything made.
There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.
Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.
True love is exceptional - two or three times a century, more or less. The rest of the time there is vanity or boredom.
The motives by which we act are inscribed in our intimate structure as mammals, as hunters, as social beings: reason illuminates these connections, it does not generate them. We are not, in the first place, reasoning beings. We may perhaps become so, more or less, in the second. In the first instance, we are driven by a thirst for life, by hunger, by the need to love, by the instinct to find our place in human society... The second instance does not even exist without the first. Reason arbitrates between instincts but uses the very same instincts as primary criteria in its arbitration.
I do not fear death. I fear suffering. And I fear old age, though less so now that I am witnessing the tranquil and pleasant old age of my father. I am afraid of frailty, and of the absence of love. But death does not alarm me. It did not scare me when I was young, and I thought at the time that this was because it was such a remote prospect. But now, at sixty, the fear has yet to arrive. I love life, but life is also struggle, suffering, pain. I think of death as akin to a well-earned rest.