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Carl von ClausewitzWar is the continuation of politics by other means.

—  Carl von Clausewitz, 1780-1831, Prussian military theorist

01-02-2024

Carl von ClausewitzNo military leader became great without audacity.

—  Carl von Clausewitz, 1780-1831, Prussian military theorist

01-02-2024

StendhalOne can acquire everything by solitude, except character.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-02-2024

Gottfried LeibnitzThere is nothing waste, nothing sterile, nothing dead in the universe; no chaos, no confusions, save in appearance.

—  Gottfried Leibnitz, 1646-1716, German philosopher & mathematician

01-01-2024

Joseph ConradI always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go.

—  Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924, British-Polish writer

01-01-2024

Cyril ConnollyThere is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.

—  Cyril Connolly, 1903-1974, British writer

01-01-2024

Cyril ConnollyNo education is worth having that does not teach the lesson of concentration on a task, however unattractive. These lessons, if not learnt early, will be learnt, if at all, with pain and grief in later life.

—  Cyril Connolly, 1903-1974, British writer

01-01-2024

Cyril ConnollyMost people do not believe in anything very much and our greatest poetry is given to us by those who do.

—  Cyril Connolly, 1903-1974, British writer

01-01-2024

Cyril ConnollyA lazy person, whatever the talents with which he set out, will have condemned himself to second-hand thoughts and to second-rate friends.

—  Cyril Connolly, 1903-1974, British writer

01-01-2024

Carl von ClausewitzIn war, more than anywhere else, things never turn out the way we expect them to.

—  Carl von Clausewitz, 1780-1831, Prussian military theorist

01-01-2024

Carl von ClausewitzThere can only be one decisive victory: the last one.

—  Carl von Clausewitz, 1780-1831, Prussian military theorist

01-01-2024

Carl von ClausewitzIf we want to secure peace, let us prepare for war.

—  Carl von Clausewitz, 1780-1831, Prussian military theorist

01-01-2024

Carl von ClausewitzEverything in war is very simple, but even the simplest is very difficult.

—  Carl von Clausewitz, 1780-1831, Prussian military theorist

01-01-2024

Carl von ClausewitzIt is better to act quickly and be wrong than to hesitate and let the time for action pass.

—  Carl von Clausewitz, 1780-1831, Prussian military theorist

01-01-2024

Carl von ClausewitzIf defense is the stronger form of war, yet has a negative object, it follows that it should be used only so long as weakness compels, and be abandoned as soon as we are strong enough to pursue a positive object.

—  Carl von Clausewitz, 1780-1831, Prussian military theorist

01-01-2024

Carl von ClausewitzEvery suspension of offensive action, either from erroneous views, from fear or from indolence, is in favor of the side acting defensively.

—  Carl von Clausewitz, 1780-1831, Prussian military theorist

01-01-2024

Carl von ClausewitzAlthough our logic seeks clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty exciting.

—  Carl von Clausewitz, 1780-1831, Prussian military theorist

01-01-2024

Carl von ClausewitzIn war we primarily strike at the enemy’s center of gravity.

—  Carl von Clausewitz, 1780-1831, Prussian military theorist

01-01-2024

Carl von ClausewitzPrinciples and rules are intended to provide a thinking man with a frame of reference.

—  Carl von Clausewitz, 1780-1831, Prussian military theorist

01-01-2024

Carl von ClausewitzThe world has a way of undermining complex plans. This is particularly true in fast moving environments. A fast moving environment can evolve more quickly than a complex plan can be adapted to it. By the time you have adapted, the target has changed.

—  Carl von Clausewitz, 1780-1831, Prussian military theorist

01-01-2024

Carl von ClausewitzGiven the same amount of intelligence, timidity will do a thousand times more damage than audacity.

—  Carl von Clausewitz, 1780-1831, Prussian military theorist

01-01-2024

Carl von ClausewitzBlind aggressiveness would destroy the attack itself, not the defense.

—  Carl von Clausewitz, 1780-1831, Prussian military theorist

01-01-2024

Carl von ClausewitzBoldness becomes rarer, the higher the rank.

—  Carl von Clausewitz, 1780-1831, Prussian military theorist

01-01-2024

Carl von ClausewitzA strong character is one that will not be unbalanced by the most powerful emotions.

—  Carl von Clausewitz, 1780-1831, Prussian military theorist

01-01-2024

Carl von ClausewitzThe side that feels the lesser urge for peace will naturally get the better bargain.

—  Carl von Clausewitz, 1780-1831, Prussian military theorist

01-01-2024

StendhalThe essential quality of a historian is not to be able to invent.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalA strange thing: The Enlightenment period in Italy ended when petty bloodthirsty tyrants were replaced by moderate monarchs.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalRussians imitate French ways, but always from a distance of fifty years.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalPleasure is often destroyed when we try to describe it.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalPower, after love, is the first source of happiness.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalA woman in her forties has value only to the men who loved her in her youth.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalAll religions are founded on the fear of the many and the intelligence of the few.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalThere is much less envy in America than in France. And much less spirit.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalLuck grabs you by the hair, but she herself is bald.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalGod's only excuse is that He doesn't exist.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalTears are an extreme smile.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalWhatever diplomats and poets may say, the most important trait of language is clarity.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalBeauty is a promise of happiness.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalOne must give the conquest of a woman the attention one gives to a game of billiards.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalOld age is nothing but the absence of craziness, the loss of illusion and passion.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalIt's not so much being rich that brings happiness, it's becoming rich.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalThe only way of touching a heart is to wound it.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalI love her beauty, but I fear her mind.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalThere are as many styles of beauty as there are visions of happiness.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalI used to think of death like I suppose soldiers think of it: it was a possible thing that I could well avoid by my skill.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalThe French are the wittiest, the most charming, and up to the present, at all events, the least musical race on Earth.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalI call “crystallization” that action of the mind that discovers fresh perfections in its beloved at every turn of events.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalPolitics in a literary work, is like a gun shot in the middle of a concert, something vulgar, and however, something which is impossible to ignore.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalOne-half, the finest half, of life is hidden from the man who does not love with passion.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalFaith, I am no such fool; everyone for himself in this desert of selfishness which is called life.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalA good book is an event in my life.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalPeople happy in love have an air of intensity.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalOur true passions are selfish.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalWhat is really beautiful must always be true.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalThe only unhappiness is a life of boredom.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalI do not feel I have wisdom enough yet to love what is ugly.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalThe more one pleases everybody, the less one pleases profoundly.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalIf you don’t love me, it does not matter, anyway I can love for both of us.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalThe boredom of married life inevitable destroys love, when love has preceded marriage.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalLove is like fever; it comes and goes without the will having any part of the process.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalWhen you want to court a woman, court her sister first.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalWomen prefer feelings over logic.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalAlmost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen to us.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalLife is very short, and it ought not to be spent crawling at the feet of miserable scoundrels.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalThe shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalThe most useful idea for tyrants is the idea of God.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

01-01-2024

StendhalStyle is everyone’s unique way of expressing the same thing.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

12-29-2023

Cyril ConnollyA mistake which is commonly made about neurotics is to suppose that they are interesting. It is not interesting to be always unhappy, engrossed with oneself, malignant or ungrateful, and never quite in touch with reality. Neurotics are heartless.

—  Cyril Connolly, 1903-1974, British writer

12-28-2023

Cyril ConnollyIdleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present.

—  Cyril Connolly, 1903-1974, British writer

12-28-2023

StendhalPrudery is a form of avarice, the worst of all.

—  Stendhal, 1783-1842, French writer

12-27-2023

Carl von ClausewitzThe more physical the activity, the less the difficulties will be. The more the activity becomes intellectual and turns into motives, which exercise a determining influence on the commander’s will, the more the difficulties will increase.

—  Carl von Clausewitz, 1780-1831, Prussian military theorist

12-26-2023

Carl von ClausewitzA general who allows himself to be decisively defeated in an extended mountain position deserves to be court-martialled.

—  Carl von Clausewitz, 1780-1831, Prussian military theorist

12-26-2023

Simone WeilThe Christian is a bad pagan, converted by a bad Jew.

—  Simone Weil, 1909-1943, French philosopher

12-25-2023

Susan SontagI envy paranoids; they actually feel people are paying attention to them.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-06-2023

Susan SontagMy emotional life: dialectic between craving for privacy and need to submerge myself in a passionate relationship to another.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-06-2023

Susan SontagI like to feel dumb. That’s how I know there’s more in the world than me.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-06-2023

Susan SontagWhat is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-06-2023

Joseph ConradGod is for men, and religion for women.

—  Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924, British-Polish writer

11-06-2023

Joseph ConradTo have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence.

—  Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924, British-Polish writer

11-06-2023

Susan SontagPhilosophy is an art form — art of thought or thought as art.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-05-2023

Susan SontagHow much self-love comes in the guise of selfless devotion

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-05-2023

Susan SontagMy library is an archive of longings.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-05-2023

Susan SontagI haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-05-2023

Susan SontagMy idea of a writer: someone interested in everything.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-05-2023

Susan SontagIt is not suffering as such that is most deeply feared but suffering that degrades.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-05-2023

Susan SontagBooks are funny little portable pieces of thought.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-05-2023

Susan SontagSilence remains, inescapably, a form of speech.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-05-2023

Susan SontagAuthoritarian political ideologies have a vested interest in promoting fear, a sense of the imminence of takeover by aliens and real diseases are useful material.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-05-2023

Susan SontagThe truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-05-2023

Susan SontagThe painter constructs, the photographer discloses.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-05-2023

Susan SontagIn America, the photographer is not simply the person who records the past, but the one who invents it.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-05-2023

Susan SontagI was not looking for my dreams to interpret my life, but rather for my life to interpret my dreams.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-05-2023

Susan SontagThe life of the creative man is lead, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-05-2023

Susan SontagBeing in Love means being willing to ruin yourself for the other person.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-05-2023

Susan SontagRules of taste enforce structures of power.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-05-2023

Susan SontagNever worry about being obsessive. I like obsessive people. Obsessive people make great art.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-05-2023

Susan SontagDepression is melancholy minus its charms - the animation, the fits.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-05-2023

Susan SontagThe only interesting answers are those which destroy the questions.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-05-2023

Susan SontagInterpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-05-2023

Susan SontagI must change my life so that I can live it, not wait for it.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-05-2023

Susan SontagI don’t feel guilt at being unsociable, though I may sometimes regret it because my loneliness is painful. But when I move into the world, it feels like a moral fall – like seeking love in a whorehouse.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-05-2023

Susan SontagArt is seduction, not rape.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-05-2023

Susan SontagIntelligence is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-05-2023

Susan SontagA large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly scientific way of affirming the primacy of ‘spirit’ over matter.

—  Susan Sontag, 1933-2004, American writer, critic, activist

11-05-2023

Joseph ConradTo be a great autocrat you must be a great barbarian.

—  Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924, British-Polish writer

11-05-2023

Joseph ConradThe sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.

—  Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924, British-Polish writer

11-05-2023

Joseph ConradThe real significance of crime is in its being a breach of faith with the community of mankind.

—  Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924, British-Polish writer

11-05-2023

Joseph ConradNowhere else than upon the sea do the days, weeks, and months fall away quicker into the past. They seem to be left astern as easily as the light air-bubbles in the swirls of the ship's wake.

—  Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924, British-Polish writer

11-05-2023

Joseph ConradIt is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously unfitted for the fate waiting them on this earth.

—  Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924, British-Polish writer

11-05-2023

Joseph ConradYour strength is just an accident owed to the weakness of others.

—  Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924, British-Polish writer

11-05-2023

Joseph ConradA man is a worker. If he is not that he is nothing.

—  Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924, British-Polish writer

11-05-2023

Joseph ConradFew men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings.

—  Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924, British-Polish writer

11-05-2023

Joseph ConradNecessity, they say, is mother of invention, but fear, too, is not barren of ingenious suggestions.

—  Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924, British-Polish writer

11-05-2023

Joseph ConradI have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine.

—  Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924, British-Polish writer

11-05-2023

Joseph ConradThe ethical view of the universe involves us in so many cruel and absurd contradictions that I have come to suspect that the aim of creation cannot be ethical at all.

—  Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924, British-Polish writer

11-05-2023

Joseph ConradAll a man can betray is his conscience.

—  Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924, British-Polish writer

11-05-2023

Joseph ConradNever test another man by your own weakness.

—  Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924, British-Polish writer

11-05-2023

Joseph ConradGossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys.

—  Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924, British-Polish writer

11-05-2023

Joseph ConradThere is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea.

—  Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924, British-Polish writer

11-05-2023

Joseph ConradIt is not the clear-sighted who rule the world. Great achievements are accomplished in a blessed, warm fog.

—  Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924, British-Polish writer

11-05-2023











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