Famous quotes containing the words sharp, statements, equivalent and/or existence:
“To write weekly, to write daily, to write shortly, to write for busy people catching trains in the morning or for tired people coming home in the evening, is a heartbreaking task for men who know good writing from bad. They do it, but instinctively draw out of harm’s way anything precious that might be damaged by contact with the public, or anything sharp that might irritate its skin.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“He admired the terrible recreative power of his memory. It was only with the weakening of this generator whose fecundity diminishes with age that he could hope for his torture to be appeased. But it appeared that the power to make him suffer of one of Odette’s statements seemed exhausted, then one of these statements on which Swann’s spirit had until then not dwelled, an almost new word relayed the others and struck him with new vigor.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“To place oneself in the position of God is painful: being God is equivalent to being tortured. For being God means that one is in harmony with all that is, including the worst. The existence of the worst evils is unimaginable unless God willed them.”
—Georges Bataille (1897–1962)
“Things perceived by the senses are immediately perceived by the senses; and things immediately perceived by the senses are ideas; and ideas cannot exist without the mind, their existence therefore consists in being perceived; when therefore they are actually perceived, there can be no doubt of their existence.”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)