Knowing Quotes - Page 15

• Never talk yourself out of knowing you're in love or into thinking that you are.

  Julia Glass

  Thinking

  Julia Glass (2002). “Three Junes”, Pantheon

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• Knowing can be a curse on a person's life. I'd traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn't know which one was heavier. Which one took the most strength to carry around? It was a ridiculous question, though, because once you know the truth, you can't ever go back and pick up your suitcase of lies. Heavier or not, the truth is yours now.

  Sue Monk Kidd

  Truth, Lying, Deceit

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• But again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. The schoolteacher is well aware of this. And the question is not one of knowing what punishment or reward attends the making of this calculation. The question is one of knowing whether two and two do make four

  Albert Camus

  Men, Two, Four

  Albert Camus (1948). “The Plague”, Vintage

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• What was it about not knowing a person that allowed you to wonder whether she might be the answer to all your problems?

  Keith Ablow

  Answers, Might, Problem

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• I wanted to become the seeker, the aroused and passionate explorer, and it was better to go at it knowing nothing at all, always choosing the unmarked bottle, always choosing your own unproven method, armed with nothing but faith and a belief in astonishment.

  Pat Conroy

  Knowing Nothing, Bottles, Passionate

  Pat Conroy (2010). “The Lords of Discipline: A Novel”, p.171, Open Road Media

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• We the mortals touch the metals, the wind, the ocean shores, the stones, knowing they will go on, inert or burning, and I was discovering, naming all the these things: it was my destiny to love and say goodbye.

  Pablo Neruda

  Goodbye, Ocean, Destiny

  Pablo Neruda (1984). “Still Another Day”, Port Townsend : Copper Canyon Press

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• I am like a snake who has already bitten. I retreat from a direct battle while knowing the slow effect of the poison.

  Anais Nin

  Snakes, Battle, Poison

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• FALLING STARS: Do you remember still the falling stars that like swift horses through the heavens raced and suddenly leaped across the hurdles of our wishes -- do you recall? And we did make so many! For there were countless numbers of stars: each time we looked above we were astounded by the swiftness of their daring play, while in our hearts we felt safe and secure watching these brilliant bodies disintegrate, knowing somehow we had survived their fall.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Horse, Stars, Fall

  Rainer Maria Rilke, Albert Ernest Flemming (1986). “Rainer Maria Rilke: Selected Poems”, p.210, Psychology Press

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• Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practices. He always has hope. He never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failure. Only the man of goodwill carries always in his heart this capacity for damnation.

  Graham Greene

  Heart, Men, Practice

  Graham Greene (1973). “The Portable Graham Greene”

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• We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy, and how you ended up knowing which colors went together. We knew that the girls were our twins, that we all existed in space like animals with identical skins, and that they knew everything about us though we couldn’t fathom them at all. We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Girl, Jobs, Animal

  Jeffrey Eugenides (1993). “The Virgin Suicides: A Novel”, p.40, Macmillan

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• Just as I do not know where I came from, so I do not know where I am going. All I know is that when I leave this world I shall fall forever into oblivion, or into the hands of an angry God, without knowing which of the two will be my lot for eternity. Such is my state of mind, full of weakness and uncertainty. The only conclusion I can draw from all this is that I must pass my days without a thought of trying to find out what is going to happen to me.

  Blaise Pascal

  Fall, Hands, Two

  Blaise Pascal, James M. Houston (2006). “The Mind on Fire: Faith for the Skeptical and Indifferent”, p.120, David C Cook

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• Fernanda, on the other hand, looked for it in vain along the paths of her everyday itinerary without knowing that the search for lost things is hindered by routine habits and that is why it is so difficult to find them.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Hands, Everyday, Routine

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• She asked him to come and see her that night. He agreed, in order to get away, knowing that he was incapable of going. But that night, in his burning bed, he understood that he had to go see her, even if he were not capable. He got dressed by feel, listening in the dark to his brother's calm breathing, the dry cough of his father in the next room, the asthma of the hens in the courtyard, the buzz of the mosquitoes, the beating of his heart, and the inordinate bustle of a world that he had not noticed until then, and he went out in the sleeping street.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Brother, Father, Heart

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez (2014). “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, p.28, Penguin UK

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• You might question a winkle - a feeling that came to you right out of the blue - but you didn’t question knowing.

  Stephen King

  Blue, Feelings, Might

  Stephen King (1999). “Hearts In Atlantis”, p.100, Simon and Schuster

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• The thing to remember about love affairs," says Simone, "is that they are all like having raccoons in your chimney." ... We have raccoons sometimes in our chimney," explains Simone. And once we tried to smoke them out. We lit a fire, knowing they were there, but we hoped the smoke would cause them to scurry out the top and never come back. Instead, they caught on fire and came crashing down into our living room, all charred and in flames and running madly around until they dropped dead." Simone swallows some wine. "Love affairs are like that," she says. "They are all like that.

  Lorrie Moore

  Running, Wine, Fire

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• The difficult task of knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is chiefly made up of their own wishes.

  George Eliot

  Men, Soul, Gentleman

  George Eliot (2015). “Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.87, Penguin

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• Now from his breast into the eyes the ache of longing mounted, and he wept at last, his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms, longed for as the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmer spent in rough water where his ship went down under Poseidon's blows, gale winds and tons of sea. Few men can keep alive through a big serf to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind: and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband, her white arms round him pressed as though forever.

  Homer

  Beach, Husband, Eye

  Homer, Robert Fitzgerald (1963). “The Odyssey”, Anchor

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• Wherefor are you knowing it? If you stacked all of the Gorg in the galaxy on top of eachother, the Gorg would kill you.

  Adam Rex

  Galaxy, Ifs

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• After my brush with the suicidal impulse, I listen with new ears to others when they speak on the subject. I think there are people who were born with that little door open, and they have to go through life knowing that they might jump through it at any moment.

  Douglas Coupland

  Suicidal, Thinking, Doors

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• I’d spent my whole life waiting to awake on an ordinary morning in the town that was destined to be my home, in the arms of the woman I was destined to love, knowing the people and doing the work that would make up the changing but essentially invariable landscape of my particular destiny.

  Michael Chabon

  Morning, Home, Destiny

  Michael Chabon (2011). “Wonder Boys”, p.55, Open Road Media

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• One of them is knowing the difference between Morality and Wisdom. Morality is temporary, Wisdom is permanent… Ho ho. Take that one to bed with you tonight.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Differences, Bed, Tonight

  Hunter S. Thompson (2011). “Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the F”, p.8, Simon and Schuster

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• Oh Christ, the exhaustion of not knowing anything. It's so tiring and hard on the nerves. It really takes it out of you, not knowing anything. You're given comedy and miss all the jokes. Every hour you get weaker. Sometimes, as I sit alone in my flat in London and stare at the window, I think how dismal it is, how heavy, to watch the rain and not know why it falls.

  Martin Amis

  Rain, Fall, Thinking

  FaceBook post by Martin Amis from Nov 26, 2011

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• Dreams were the worst. Of course I dreamed of food and love, but they were pleasant rather than otherwise. But then I'd dream of things like slitting a baby's throat, mistaking it for a baby goat. I'd have nightmares of other islands stretching away from mine, infinities of islands, islands spawning islands, like frogs' eggs turning into polliwogs of islands, knowing that I had to live on each and every one, eventually, for ages, registering their flora, their fauna, their geography.

  Elizabeth Bishop

  Dream, Baby, Islands

  Elizabeth Bishop (2015). “Geography III: Poems”, p.15, Macmillan

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• I understand, and not knowing how to express myself without pagan words, I’d rather remain silent

  Arthur Rimbaud

  Not Knowing, Pagan, Silent

  Arthur Rimbaud, Louise Varèse (2011). “A Season in Hell and the Drunken Boat”, p.11, New Directions Publishing

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• As far as I'm concerned, if something is so complicated that you can't explain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway.

  Bill Watterson

  Complicated, Calvin And Hobbes Friendship, Concerned

  "The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury". Book by Bill Watterson, October 1992.

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