revenge is for children and the emotionally retarded

that painting says you cannot suppress the wild thing, the uniqueness that will occur among humans no matter how much we try to avoid it

it is your fate, forgetfulness. all of the old lessons of life, you lose and gain and lose and gain again.

humans live best when each has his place to stand, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things and what he may achieve, destroy the place and you destroy the person.

we are not people passing this way, he thought. we are primal elements linking one piece of Time to another. and when we have passed, everything behind us will drop off into no-sound, a place like the no-room of the Ixians, yet never again the same as it was before we came.

most believe that a satisfactory future requires a return to an idealised past, a past which never in fact existed.

no - memory unlocks no meanings. without anguish of the spirit, which is a wordless experience, there are no meanings anywhere.

the present is distraction; the future a dream; only memory can unlock the meaning of life.

most civilisation is based on cowardice. it’s so easy to civilise by teaching cowardice. you water down the standards which would lead to bravery. you restrain the will. you regulate the appetites. you fence in the horizons. you make a law for every movement, you deny the existence of chaos. you teach even the children to breathe slowly. you tame.

i play at being callous and i can make the necessary decisions, even decisions which kill, but i cannot escape the suffering. for a long, long time - those journals you stole tell it truly - that was the only emotion i knew.

there’s a time, leto, a time when you’re alive. a time when you’re supposed to be alive. it can have a magic, that time, while you’re living it. you know you’re never going to see a time like that again.