I have lots of original ideas, but sometimes someone has said it better than I ever could. This is my list of those times.


"The greatest danger, that of losing one's own self, may pass off as quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, that of an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc., is sure to be noticed."
-Kierkegaard

"We are destined to find no foothold and no rest."
-Hölderlin

"I've got a threshold, Jules, I've got a threshold for the abuse that I'll take and right now I'm a racecar, man, and you got me in the red. I'm just saying, I'm just SAYING it's fucking dangerous to have a racecar in the fucking red, that's all. I might blow. "
-Pulp Fiction

"Since the beginning of Western thought, the Being of beings emerges as what is alone worthy of thought. If we think this historic development in a truly historical way, then that in which the beginning of Western thought rests first becomes manifest: that in Greek antiquity, the Being of beings becomes worthy of thought is the beginning of the West and is the hidden source of its destiny."
-Heidegger

"Back on the street I saw a great big smiling sun
It was a good day and an evil day and all was bright and new
And it seemed to me that most destruction was being done
by those who could not decide between the two."
-Nick Cave

"Deliver this message to the one I love the most:
I've lost all my money to a three hundred pound ghost
Squeaky was a sad child, the product of neglect
Got stoned by a jellyfish, demanding her respect
Demons are real, they are standing still"
-Guided By Voices

"Nevertheless I have understood
Where the logician watches god hinge all on a die
Nevertheless: I have understood!
That all this is the breathbetween moment
Our eyelids open and close"
-Current 93

"To learn true humility (I am using this expression to refer to the state of mind under discussion) it is well for a person to withdraw from the turmoil of the world (we see also that Christ withdrew when the people wanted to proclaim him king, as well as when he had to walk the thorny path), for in life either the depressing or the inspiring impression is too dominant for true equilibrium to come about. Here, of course, individuality is very decisive, for just as nearly every philosopher believes he has found the truth and nearly every poet believes he has found Mount Parnassus, so we find on the other hand many people who link their existence entirely to another, as the parasite to a plant, live in him, die in him (for example the Frenchman in relation to Napoleon). But in the midst of nature where man, free from life's often suffocating air, breathes more freely, here the soul opens itself willingly to every noble impression"
-Kierkegaard

"Time carves initials into the prison of your face
Creeping like a spy on broken glass
Cars kiss the tarmac as they cut right to the chase
Cut price epiphany, but somehow it just never seems to last"
-Firewater

"the voluntary relinquishing of responsibility for our lives and our actions is one of the greatest enemies of our time."
-Genesis P. Orridge

"If I stuck to what I know now, I wouldn't have half what I forget. You can paint me, well, attempt it, and reinvent me by where I slept. Remain reinvented and unkept."
-Giant Sand

"So you sparkle for seconds
then dissolve into mist
The fog closes in
And you think about crowley
you think its a game but the game is just you
When shall you stop hiding in the heart of your night"
-Current 93

"Journals are actually the first books to be written in common. Writing in company is an interesting symptom giving us an inkling of a great development in authorship. Perhaps one day people will write, think and act as a mass. Entire communities, even nations, will undertake One Work."'on Goethe'

" Susie...Sarah...I once read that names which begin with the letter 'S' are the names of SNAKES! Sssss! Ssssss! "
-Suspiria

"She falls in love with his demeanor, until the bubble bursts. She's just the same now, only meaner. Worse has come to worst."
-Giant Sand

"'There's no point in living, there's no point in life' but sometimes I hear you at the back of my mind. And a golden door opens but no light appears. They spit in the bridle and there's blood in the saddle, and you slip in the shit, you've shat in yourself; and Christus is Equis and Equis is God; and his name flies with fury, but the wind cuts through you. You follow in footsteps that tread by a flower. Then I wanted to hold you, but you're destined to fall."
-Current 93

"I'm saying you've already done plenty of things to regret, you just don't know what they are. It's when you discover them, when you see the folly in something you've done, and you wish that you had it do over, but you know you can't, because it's too late. So you pick that thing up, and carry it with you to remind you that life goes on, the world will spin without you, you really don't matter in the end. Then you will gain character, because honesty will reach out from inside and tattoo itself across your face. "
-Danny De Vito, The Big Kahuna

"though once i thought
oh once i read
the hidden god plays hide and seek
whilst others still run from him
from the world's stomach
the goddies emerge
and who comes to judge us
and who comes to push us
the bloody master
is bloody dead dead dead"
-Current 93

"Do you think I'm beautiful?
Or do you think I'm evil?
Will you take me for a ride?
The one that never ends
Too loose, too tight, too dark, too bright
A lie, the truth, which one shall I use?
If the lie succeeds
Then you'll know what I mean
When I tell you I have secrets
To attend"
-The Afghan Whigs

"No one's blaming you, dear. Things -- happen. Things take a turn. We live in a miracle. That's the promise. That's the future. The pain will wash away. The healing will commence."
-Felicia's Journey

"You had to get a grip, but I was caught inside of it. Sure you made an impression....depression."
-Jawbreaker

"well you can take your reincarnation, transsubstantiation and your papal kiss
cause i'm with a beast in beastly bliss
and all i want is copulation!
oh darling!
and there ain't no grace, there ain't no guilt
cause this is the law, do what thou wilt
the name is crowley, it rhymes with holy
it isn't crowley, that rhymes with fouly, eeewww"
-Current 93

"When two people fall in love and suspect they are made for each other, the thing is to have the courage to break it off, for by continuing they have everything to lose and nothing to gain."
-Soren Kierkegaard

"Six fuckin' car lengths. That's a hundred and six fuckin' feet, mister! If I had to stop suddenly, you woulda hit me. I want you to get a fuckin' driver's manual, and I want you to study that motherfucker. And I want you to obey the goddamn rules! Fifty-fuckin' thousand people were killed on the highway last year 'cause of fuckin' assholes like you. Tell me you're gonna get a manual!"
-Robert Loggia,Lost Highway

"I spurn the easy tribute of a heart
Which will not set the worthy man apart:
I choose, Sir, to be chosen; and in fine,
The friend of mankind is no friend of mine."
-Moliere, "The Misanthrope"

"But to have these feelings at the right time on the right grounds towards the right people for the right motive and in the right way is to feel them to an intermediate, that is, to the best degree; and this is the mark of virtue. Similarly, there are excess and deficiency and a mean in the case of actions. But it is in the field of actions and feelings that virtue operates; and in them excess and deficiencies are failings, whereas the mean is praised and recognized as a success:and these are both marks of virtue. Virtue then is a mean condition.inasmuch as it aims at hitting the mean."
-Aristotle

"Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation, they're not a record, and they're irrelevant if you have the facts. "
-Memento

"be mindful of the prayers you send
pray hard but pray with care
for the tears you are crying now are just your answered prayers
letters of light we scale merrily, move mysteriously around
so that when you think you're climbing up, man, in fact you're climbing down"
-Nick Cave

" There's an old joke. Uh, two elderly women are at a Catskills mountain resort, and one of 'em says, 'Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.' The other one says, 'Yeah, I know, and such small portions.' Well, that's essentially how I feel about life. Full of loneliness and misery and suffering and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly. "
-Annie Hall

"What is not forgiven them is only their calling things by their right names, their saying that they are looking around when they are looking around and that nakedness is nakedness. Blessed are those who look around and are silent, blessed are those who see but hide what they see."
-Lev Shestov

"Am I vain? Have I shame?
Are my thoughts of a man
Who can call himself sane?
Do I blame, all my pain
On the wickedness
I have arranged?
If I do, bring it down"
-The Afghan Whigs

"I knew that I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I'd been happy. Then I fired four or more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness."
-Camus

"I was looking for an end to this for some kind of closure
time moved so rapidly, I had no hope of keeping track of it
I remembered all my friends who had died of exposure,
and I remembered all the ones who had died from the lack of it"
-Nick Cave

"You think I'm proud of this
Well maybe
But the shame you never lose
Infatuated with a lunatic and cornered by the muse
And it goes down every night
This must be what jail is really like
And I will scratch my way out of this pen, again"
-The Afghan Whigs

" I have to believe in a world outside my own mind. I have to believe that my actions still have meaning, even if I can't remember them. I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world's still there. Do I believe the world's still there? Is it still out there?... Yeah. We all need mirrors to remind ourselves who we are. I'm no different.."
-Memento

The language he used was that of a man who was sick and tired of the world he lived in--though he had much liking for his fellow men--and had resolved, for his part, to have no truck with injustices and compromises with the truth.
-Camus

"I'm nostalgic for conversations I had yesterday. I've begun reminiscing events before they even occur. I'm reminiscing this right now. I can't go to the bar because I've looked back at it in my memory and I didn't have a good time."
-Kicking and Screaming

"Our early youth is like a flower in the light of dawn, cupping a lovely dewdrop in which all surroundings are reflected with a melancholy harmony. But soon the sun rises above the horizon and the dewdrop evaporates, life's dreams vanish with it, and then the question (to resort again to a floral metaphor) is whether like the oleander one is able on one's own account to produce a drop that can stand as the fruit of one's own life. This requires above all that one stand on the soil to which one really belongs, but that is not always so easy to find. There are in this respect fortunate temperaments so decisively inclined in a particular direction that they faithfully follow the path assigned to them, undeterred for a moment by the thought that perhaps they should really be treading another. There are others who let themselves be so completely directed by their surroundings that they never become clear about what they are really after."
-Kierkegaard

"Now I've turned the mirrors to wall I've emptied out the peopled halls I've nailed shut the windows and locked the doors There is no escape, you see I chase you up and down the stairs,Under tables and over chairs I reach out and I touch your hair, And it cuts me like a knife For there is always some other little thing you gotta do."
-Nick Cave

"Thus the moral worth of an action does not lie in the effect expected from it nor any principle of action that needs to borrow its motive from this expected effect. For all these effects (agreeableness of one's condition and even the furtherance of other peoples' happiness) could have been brought about also through other causes and would not have required the will of a rational being,in which the highest and unconditional good can alone be found."
-Kant

"I see the glass half full...but of poison."
-Woody Allen

"sometimes with the most intense pain, a paralysis of sensibility occurs. The soul disintegrates--hence the deadly frost--the free power of the mind--the shattering,ceaseless wit of this kind of despair. There is no inclination for anything any more--the person is alone, like a baleful power--as he has no connection with the rest of the world he consumes himself gradually--and in accordance with his own principle he is --misanthropic and misotheos"
-Novalis

"The past about which I am supposed to be anxious must stand in relation to the possibility to me. If I am anxious about a past misfortune, it is not because it is in the past but because it may be repeated, i.e., may become future. If I am anxious because of a past offense, it is because I have not placed it in essential relation to myself as past and have in some deceitful way or another prevented it from being past. If indeed it is actually past, then I cannot be anxious but only repentant."
-Kierkegaard



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