Latest Quotes

“You will recall your femininity. It may seem to you then as if you were unmanly, stupid, and feminine so to speak. But you must accept the ridiculous, otherwise you will suffer distress, and there will come a time, when you are least observant, when it will suddenly round on you and make you ridicul…”

— Carl Jung, The Red Book: A Reader's Edition (Philemon)

“Lux's gyrations on the roof so long ago; and even now, if we were to be honest with ourselves, we would have to admit that it is always that pale wraith we make love to, always her feet snagged in the gutter, always her single blooming hand steadying itself against the chimney, no matter what our pr…”

— Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides: A Novel

“The doctor's report, in a series of titillating numbers, presents Lux in a stiff paper gown stepping onto the scale (99), opening her mouth for the thermometer (98.7), and urinating into a plastic cup (WBC 6–8 occ. clump; mucus heavy; leukocytes 2 +). The simple appraisal 'mild abrasions' reports th…”

— Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides: A Novel

“She met us at the bus station in the small town she now lives in, because the station was the only place that served coffee. Her hands were red-knuckled and her gums had receded. Her tragedy hadn't made her more approachable, and in fact lent her the unknowable quality of a person who had suffered m…”

— Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides: A Novel

“Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity. For the crowd believes that if it cannot see to the bottom of something it must be profound.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“To find everything profound—that is an inconvenient trait. It makes one strain one's eyes all the time, and in the end one finds more than one might have wished.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

“Woe, when you feel homesick for the land as if it had offered more freedom—and there is no longer any 'land.'”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“Mystical explanations are considered deep. The truth is that they are not even superficial.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“The popular medical formulation of morality that goes back to Ariston of Chios, 'virtue is the health of the soul,' would have to be changed to become useful, at least to read: 'your virtue is the health of your soul.' For there is no health as such, and all attempts to define a thing that way have…”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“The pleasures of writing include acting like exaggerations of your most-extreme self.”

— Chuck Palahniuk, Reddit.com

“The way we view the world, the ultimate barometer of quality is: if it gets shared, it's quality. If someone wants to toil in obscurity, if that makes them happy, that's fine. Not everybody has to change the world.”

— Emerson Spartz, newyorker.com

“I realized that influence was inextricably linked to impact—the more influence you had, the more impact you could create... The ability to make things go viral felt like the closest that we could get to having a human superpower.”

— Emerson Spartz, newyorker.com

“Every day I got up, went to work, and got hit in the face with something that I never could have predicted from a business that I'd originally started so I wouldn't have to talk to people. I went from doing small tasks with measurable results (selling more clothes!) to abstractions like going on E!…”

— Sophia Amoruso, #GIRLBOSS

“Goethe speaks for the artist, and his own position with regard to standards is quite clear: he represents the humanistic tradition which places responsibility for the fate of culture and individual morality in the hands of the intellectual elite. This elite betrays its mission when it plays up to th…”

— Leo Löwenthal, Literature and Mass Culture

“Goethe is not disturbed because of this restless urge for novelty in itself, but rather because it prevents the kind of ripening that is essential to the creative process—that in the constant reading of newspapers about the events of yesterday. For instance, one 'wastes the days and lives from hand…”

— Leo Löwenthal, Literature and Mass Culture

“We have newspapers for all hours of the day. A clever head could still add a few more. This way everything, what everybody does, wants, writes, even what he plans, is publicly exposed. One can only enjoy oneself, or suffer, for the entertainment of others, and in the greatest rush, this is communica…”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Literature and Mass Culture

“Formula of my happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of Idols and Anti-Christ

“The free press is the ubiquitous vigilant eye of a people's soul, the embodiment of a people's faith in itself, the eloquent link that connects the individual with the state and the world, the embodied culture that transforms material struggles into intellectual struggles and idealizes their crude m…”

— Karl Marx , The Postmodern Turn

“There is little historical evidence to suggest that any form of radical art has produced a discernible political or social effectivity. In saying this, I have no wish to marginalize radical or avant-garde art any more than it has already marginalized itself, but I do wish to question the claims that…”

— John Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture

“The left's concern for the interests and wellbeing of the powerless and the weak, and its belief that such powerlessness and weakness are the results of the social system, and not of the inadequacies of the people within it, leads it to propose a political program of social action. The right has bee…”

— John Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture