FastSaying

The satirist is prevented by repulsion from gaining a better knowledge of the world he is attracted to, yet he is forced by attraction to concern himself with the world that repels him.


Italo Calvino

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

She buys "mixed salad greens" for seven dollars a bag, triple-washed with who knows what. And to get...
RUDOLPH DELSON The love you get, is equal to the love you give.
BEN OAK His life seemed like a deck of cards, and in the midst of all those two’s and three’s someone ha...
TEKOA MANNING The scientific method gives us information by testing and repeating observable things so that we can...
LEWIS N. ROE i know im not the girl you wanted. not the one you want to hear from. but what you see is what you g...
SIMI GREWAL Life is not a game. Still, in this life, we choose the games we live to play.
J.R. RIM I'm fucking the grave, I thought, I'm bringing the dead back to life...
CHARLES BUKOWSKI The river of knowledge has no depth.
CHINONYE J. CHIDOLUE Now isn´t the time to change yourself to fit into the world... you should be changing the world to ...
ALEXANDRA BRACKEN To search the sands of a lost desert for truth and justice in this world today you might as well be ...
GARY F EVANS... He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate t...
HENRY MILLER Mother Superior jump the gun...
-The Beatles, Happiness is a Warm Gun
LAUREN MYRACLE Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you...
C. JOYBELL C. Today is about the now, the moment you live in, so do now what you want to do
SOTONYE ANGA PEACE IS THE OBJECTIVE TO WAR, BUT THE BLOOD RUNNETH STILL
NATALIE URQUIETA A grocer is attracted to his business by a magnetic force as great as the repulsion which renders it...
HONORE DE BALZAC Pain Is Caused By Pleasure
SULLY ERNA The source of numerous psychic disturbances and difficulties occasioned by man's progressive alienat...
CARL GUSTAV JUNG He had long ago learned that society imposes insults that must be borne, comforted by the knowledge ...
MARIO PUZO Show the world there's something to fight for. Your life is the proof that beauty can still be attai...
LANA M. H. WILDER Peaceful is the one who's not concerned with having more or less.
Unbound by name and fame, he ...
JALALUDDIN MEVLANA RUMI - مولوی Dedication is the preparation to success!
WERNER BOTHA Daniel's desk by the window is piled high with his drawings. The artwork is everything. He thinks of...
J.J. BROWN If an ignorant person is attracted by the things of the world, that is bad. But if a learned person ...
ABU BAKR How do you know if something is real? That’s easy. Does it change you? Does it form you? Does it g...
C. JOYBELL C. When looking for evidence that something exists, it's silly to start by assuming that it is impossib...
LEWIS N. ROE Man is encased, as though in a shell, in the particular ranking of the simplest values and value-qua...
MAX SCHELER Man is condemned to be free. Condemned because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at lib...
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE The world that we live in is a weakness. To continuously live in an environment that weakens you, on...
APURVA GAGLANI By his monstrous way of life he seemed to have put himself beyond the limits of reality. Nothing mov...
JAMES JOYCE I have for a long time loved fabulist, imaginative fiction, such as the writing of Italo Calvino, Jo...
ALAN LIGHTMAN You know, I don't think my music is important, I don't think it's changing the world, I ...
SUFJAN STEVENS Tewler Americanus in particular was irritated by a harsh logic that overrode his dearest belief in h...
H.G. WELLS David cuts through all the many needs, wants, and desires that may have been bouncing around inside ...
CRAIG GROESCHEL The secret of my success is my hairspray.
RICHARD GERE Love is blind, and a deaf-mute too.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of h...
JAMES THURBER The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of h...
JAMES THURBER The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of h...
JAMES THURBER The world is a beautiful place
to be born into
if you don't mind happiness
not always...
LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI A man's work reveals him. In social intercourse he gives you the surface that he wishes the world to...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM He is the Cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to him.
RUDYARD KIPLING The man who was once starved may revenge himself upon the world not by stealing just once, or by ste...
ANAïS NIN Your mind is a Microcosm of strength and power. There’s all the magic you need in it. When all els...
CHINONYE J. CHIDOLUE The things i know now, i never knew then. I wish i knew.
SOTONYE ANGA What is meant by a "knowledge of the world" is simply, an acquaintance with the infirmities of men
CHARLES DICKENS The inventor...looks upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improv...
ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL The end of the world is a strange concept. The world is always ending, and the end is always being a...
NEIL GAIMAN Beauty fades, but knowledge is eternal
ANDREW FAIRCHILD If the best is possible, than good is never enough and only do the best.
ROBERT SIAHAAN Typing is the future of talking and to don't forgot and brother of feature.
DEYTH BANGER By alienation is meant a mode of experience in which the person experiences himself as an alien. He ...
ERICH FROMM By alienation is meant a mode of experience in which the person experiences himself as an alien. He ...
ERICH FROMM To him who, though by no means near the end, is yet advancing, He is the way; to him who has put off...
ORIGEN He who imagines he can do without the world deceives himself much; but he who fancies the world cann...
FRANCOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD He who imagines he can do without the world deceives himself much; but he who fancies the world cann...
FRANçOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD Words will always be the words, the world will change.
MAYANK KUMAR LOUTERIYA All the lies and evasions by which man has nourished himself -- civilization, in a word is the fruit...
HENRY MILLER All the lies and evasions by which man has nourished himself / civilization, in a word is the fruits...
HENRY MILLER Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.....
RAYMOND CHANDLER Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. ...
REBECCA HARDING DAVIS He seems to be of great authority. Close with him, give him gold; and though authority be a stubbo...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE he said by telephone from Florida, since the play is ''dealing with death and dissolution. But it wa...
HAROLD GOULD We live aware of God moment by moment. He is not part of our lives; He is our life.
CRAIG GROESCHEL We are hell different but vanity keeps us stuck.
PARUL WADHWA God is present by Love alone. By Love alone He is great and glorious. By Love alone He liveth and fe...
THOMAS TRAHERNE The world has been taught to be scared of him, but the reality is that he is scared of the world bec...
TREVOR NOAH But he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon with...
BIBLE I had a coach that was not a great player, but he taught with kids and juniors so that by the time h...
GUY FORGET Maybe I’m stupid. Maybe I’m just as evil as he is by keeping my mouth shut. But he told me once ...
LAUREN HAMMOND I'm about to do something very clever and a tiny bit against the rules of the universe. It's importa...
TOMMY DONBAVAND When a captive lion steps out of his cage, he comes into a wider world than the lion who has known o...
YUKIO MISHIMA Open your mind. Accept differences. Yearn for peace. Heal the world.
MATSHONA DHLIWAYO Feast of the Annunciation of our Lord to the Virgin Mary The Old Testament does not occupy itself...
BENJAMIN B. WARFIELD A librarian for president is exactly what this country needs.
RICHARD CASTLE Learn from me, if not by my precepts, then by my example, how dangerous is the pursuit of knowledge ...
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT Wrong?
So you are saying, I'm wrong okay then... It's not possible every time to be right, one ...
DEYTH BANGER Integrity is not everything, but it is the only thing that matters.
JEFFREY FRY No man is much regarded by the rest of the world. He that considers how little he dwells upon the co...
SAMUEL JOHNSON The battle is not physical, it is spiritual and your mind is the battleground. Keep your mind pure a...
JEANETTE CORON A great future starts with what you can see
SOTONYE ANGA One should see the world, and see himself as a scale with an equal balance of good and evil. When he...
MAIMONIDES The fear of God is the only cure for the fear of people.
CRAIG GROESCHEL No! No one who was great in the world will be forgotten, but everyone was great in his own way, and ...
SøREN KIERKEGAARD A love lust for war ends in death...
PHILIP T. M. The little trouble in the world that is not due to love is due to friendship.
E. W. HOWE I live my life progressing for nothing else but the best.
JONATHAN ANTHONY BURKETT For him to be associated with this movie is cause for concern. He needs to come clean that he repudi...
RAFAEL MEDOFF When he entered the anteroom, two women looked up at him. One was Miss Robertson, the governor's sec...
GEORGE P. ELLIOTT The brevity of our lives breeds a kind of temporal parochialism—an ignorance of or an indifference...
KATHRYN SCHULZ The Biggest Threat to our Democracy, Freedoms and Future is Leadership that fosters and Appeases the...
MICHAEL HARRIS We are alone, with no excuses. That is the idea I shall try to convey when I say that man is condemn...
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE For whatever be the knowledge which we are able to obtain of God, either by perception or reflection...
ORIGEN To a man, his world is what he sees, thinks and believes. But the man is not the world. He is just a...
SEYMOUR NIGHTWEAVER Our life is a series of moments. Let them all go. Moments. All gathering towards this one.
NOW IS GOOD Feast of John Coleridge Patteson, First Bishop of Melanesia, & his Companions, Martyrs, 1871 Kn...
JAMES I. PACKER My time has is here, my mission has failed, but in spite of my limitations i will never loose faith....
RYAN LEONARD The heart of a man is a small thing but it desires great matters. It is not big enough for a dog’s...
PAUL HOFFMAN It's not the end of the world, but you can see it from there.
PIERRE ELLIOTT TRUDEAU From the moment when he catches sight of the light of the world, a man seeks to find out himself and...
MAX STIRNER

More Italo Calvino

An exotic birthplace on its own is not informative of anything.
ITALO CALVINO His trees were now hung all over with scrawled pieces of paper and bits of cardboard with maxims fro...
ITALO CALVINO Novels as dull as dishwater, with the grease of random sentiments floating on top.
ITALO CALVINO The human race is a zone of living things that should be defined by tracing its confines.
ITALO CALVINO What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the r...
ITALO CALVINO It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.
ITALO CALVINO Myth is the hidden part of every story, the buried part, the region that is still unexplored because...
ITALO CALVINO I am prisoner of a gaudy and unlivable present, where all forms of human society have reached an ext...
ITALO CALVINO Biographical data, even those recorded in the public registers, are the most private things one has,...
ITALO CALVINO Everything can change, but not the language that we carry inside us, like a world more exclusive and...
ITALO CALVINO The ideal place for me is the one in which it is most natural to live as a foreigner.
ITALO CALVINO The catalogue of forms is endless: until every shape has found its city, new cities will continue to...
ITALO CALVINO The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretch...
ITALO CALVINO When politicians and politically minded people pay too much attention to literature, it is a bad sig...
ITALO CALVINO A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.
ITALO CALVINO A human being becomes human not through the casual convergence of certain biological conditions, but...
ITALO CALVINO Without translation, I would be limited to the borders of my own country. The translator is my most ...
ITALO CALVINO Nature in America does not arouse powerful emotions in me.
ITALO CALVINO What is modern art but the attempt to pinpoint vague, incorporeal, inexpressible sensations? What is...
ITALO CALVINO Revolutionaries are more formalistic than conservatives.
ITALO CALVINO I write... sonnets... and writing sonnets is boring. You have to find rhymes; you have to write hend...
ITALO CALVINO The city of Leonia refashions itself every day: every morning the people wake between fresh sheets, ...
ITALO CALVINO Melancholy is sadness that has taken on lightness
ITALO CALVINO Myth is the hidden part of every story, the buried part, the region that is still unexplored because...
ITALO CALVINO Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places e...
ITALO CALVINO The unconscious is the ocean of the unsayable, of what has been expelled from the land of language, ...
ITALO CALVINO Melancholy is sadness that has taken on lightness.
ITALO CALVINO In love, as in gluttony, pleasure is a matter of the utmost precision.
ITALO CALVINO The unconscious is the ocean of the unsayable, of what has been expelled from the land of language, ...
ITALO CALVINO One writes fables in periods of oppression.
ITALO CALVINO A quarter of America is a dramatic, tense, violent country, exploding with contradictions, full of b...
ITALO CALVINO Of course, I'm of the generation that grew up with Hemingway and Faulkner as strong influences.
ITALO CALVINO Thoughtful lightness can make frivolity seem dull and heavy.
ITALO CALVINO It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear
ITALO CALVINO Viaggi per rivivere il tuo passato? — era a questo punto la domanda del Kan, che poteva anche esse...
ITALO CALVINO Every time I've had to do journalistic investigations, I've cursed, but later I discovered t...
ITALO CALVINO In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Follo...
ITALO CALVINO Sections in the bookstore

- Books You Haven't Read
- Books You Needn't Read
- B...
ITALO CALVINO To fly is the opposite of traveling: you cross a gap in space, you vanish into the void, you accept ...
ITALO CALVINO Rarely does an interviewer ask questions you did not expect. I have given a lot of interviews, and I...
ITALO CALVINO How much energy is wasted in Italy in trying to write the novel that obeys all the rules. The energy...
ITALO CALVINO Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be.
ITALO CALVINO Mas a desgraça é que foi levado à loucura por Eros, deus pagão, que quanto mais reprimido, mais ...
ITALO CALVINO Writers divide into those who write biting their nails and those who don't. Some writers write l...
ITALO CALVINO The only contact we could have with the void was through this little the void had produced as quinte...
ITALO CALVINO Classics are books which, the more we think we know them through hearsay, the more original, unexpec...
ITALO CALVINO If one wanted to depict the whole thing graphically, every episode, with its climax, would require a...
ITALO CALVINO What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the r...
ITALO CALVINO You are at the wheel of your car, waiting at a traffic light, you take the book out of the bag, rip ...
ITALO CALVINO Ya en el escaparate de la librería localizaste la portada con el título que buscabas. Siguiendo es...
ITALO CALVINO Do you believe that every story must have a beginning and an end? In ancient times a story could end...
ITALO CALVINO Don't you ever get tired of reading?" she asked. "You could hardly be called good company! Don't you...
ITALO CALVINO In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Follo...
ITALO CALVINO The unconscious is the ocean of the unsayable, of what has been expelled from the land of language, ...
ITALO CALVINO A classic is a work which persists as a background noise even when a present that is totally incompa...
ITALO CALVINO I'm a regular guy; I like well-defined outlines. I'm old-fashioned, bourgeois.
ITALO CALVINO The public figure of the writer, the writer-character, the 'personality-cult' of the author,...
ITALO CALVINO The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand
ITALO CALVINO Falsehood is never in words; it is in things.
ITALO CALVINO ...the world was trying to change its old face and show its underbelly of earth and roots.
ITALO CALVINO Amusement has always been the great moving force behind culture.
ITALO CALVINO E combattendo, troveranno che le parole non hanno più significato.
ITALO CALVINO The traveler recognizes the little that is his, discovering the much he has not had and will never h...
ITALO CALVINO It was the hour in which objects lose the consistency of shadow that accompanies them during the nig...
ITALO CALVINO If all material were transparent—the ground that supports us, the envelope that sheathes our body�...
ITALO CALVINO Tu casa, al ser el lugar donde lees, puede decirnos cuál es el lugar que los libros tienen en tu vi...
ITALO CALVINO Although I am small, ugly and dirty, I am highly ambitious, and at the slightest flattery, I immedia...
ITALO CALVINO My mother delayed my enrollment in the Fascist scouts, the Balilla, as long as possible, fi...
ITALO CALVINO A los duelos suceden tarde o temprano acontecimientos alegres, es ley de vida.
ITALO CALVINO No puede haber amor si no se es uno mismo con todas sus fuerzas.
ITALO CALVINO - Quando sarai stanco di star lì cambierai idea! - gli gridò.
- Non cambierò mai idea, - fec...
ITALO CALVINO hasta que murió, sin haber comprendido, tras una vida entera dedicada a la fe, en qué creía, pero...
ITALO CALVINO Yo tenía la impresión de que mi hermano no sólo había enloquecido del todo, sino que se estaba v...
ITALO CALVINO کوزیمو طرحی نوشته و منتشر کرده بود که این نام را داشت: "پ...
ITALO CALVINO Nuestro padre se asomó al antepecho.
- ¡Cuando te canses de estar ahí ya cambiarás de idea!...
ITALO CALVINO A gentleman, my Lord Father, is such whether he is on earth or on the treetops
ITALO CALVINO As a matter of fact, we had already been warned against sliding down the marble banisters, not out o...
ITALO CALVINO Cosimo stretched out his arms. 'I came up here before you, my lords, and here I will stay afterwards...
ITALO CALVINO It was on the fifteenth of June, 1767, that Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò, my brother, sat among us for ...
ITALO CALVINO That mesh of leaves and twigs of fork and froth, minute and endless, with the sky glimpsed only in s...
ITALO CALVINO Cosimo did not yet know love, and what is any experience without that? What point is there in riskin...
ITALO CALVINO Now that he is no longer here I should be interested in so many things: philosophy, politics, histor...
ITALO CALVINO We live in a country where causes are always seen but never effects.
ITALO CALVINO In the Ondariva gardens the branches spread out like the tentacles of extraordinary animals, and the...
ITALO CALVINO Le imprese più ardite vanno vissute con l'animo più semplice. (Cosimo Piovasco Barone di Rondò)
ITALO CALVINO Her breast was young, the nipples rosy. Cosimo just grazed it with his lips, before Viola slid away ...
ITALO CALVINO ...his life was dominating by conflicting ideas, as often happens in periods of transition. The turb...
ITALO CALVINO Il bassotto alzò il muso verso di lui, con lo sguardo dei cani quando non capiscono e non sanno che...
ITALO CALVINO We'll make an army in the trees and bring the earth and the people on it to their senses.
ITALO CALVINO The more time passed, the less happened. The more they felt something must happen, the more the bail...
ITALO CALVINO And she knew him and so herself, for although she had always known herself she had never been able t...
ITALO CALVINO Ombrosa non c’è più. Guardando il cielo sgombro, mi domando se è davvero esistita. Quel frastag...
ITALO CALVINO There is the moment when the silence of the countryside gathers in the ear and breaks into a myriad ...
ITALO CALVINO That wish to enter into an elusive element which had urged Cosimo into the trees, was still working ...
ITALO CALVINO Why d’you make me suffer?"
“Because I love you.”
Now it was his turn to get angry. �...
ITALO CALVINO Si conobbero. Lui conobbe lei e se stesso, perché in verità non s'era mai saputo. E lei conobbe lu...
ITALO CALVINO So began their love, the boy happy and amazed, she happy and not surprised at all (nothing happens b...
ITALO CALVINO Myśli te zaprawione były pewną goryczą ludzi starych, którzy więcej cierpią nad utratą rzecz...
ITALO CALVINO Something must always remain that eludes us ... For power to have an object on which it can be exerc...
ITALO CALVINO again I am torn between the necessity and the impossibility of answering.
ITALO CALVINO A person, for example, reads in adulthood a book that is important for him, and it makes him say, "H...
ITALO CALVINO Amedeo loved thick tomes, and in tackling them he felt the physical pleasure of undertaking a great ...
ITALO CALVINO Resta-nos esclarecer a parte que nesse golfo fantástico cabe ao imaginário indireto, ou seja, o co...
ITALO CALVINO La mia ricerca dell’esattezza si biforca in due direzioni. Da una parte la riduzione degli avvenim...
ITALO CALVINO Penso che siamo sempre alla caccia di qualcosa di nascosto o di solo potenziale o ipotetico, di cui ...
ITALO CALVINO Journeys to relive your past?' was the Khan's question at this point, a question which could also ha...
ITALO CALVINO After a seven days' march through woodland, the traveler directed toward Baucis cannot see the city ...
ITALO CALVINO what he sought was always something lying ahead, and even if it was a matter of the past it was a pa...
ITALO CALVINO God knows wherebthey are now, the people I receive instructions, or rather-let's come right out and ...
ITALO CALVINO ...eyes that, like those of children, look at an eternal present without forgiveness.
ITALO CALVINO Today each of you is the object of the other’s reading, one reads in the other the unwritten story...
ITALO CALVINO In Chloe, a great city, the people who move through the streets are all strangers. At each encounter...
ITALO CALVINO There is still one of which you never speak.'

Marco Polo bowed his head.

'Veni...
ITALO CALVINO With cities, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unexpecte...
ITALO CALVINO You take delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question ...
ITALO CALVINO Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret,...
ITALO CALVINO I write by hand, making many, many corrections. I would say I cross out more than I write. I have to...
ITALO CALVINO If I were to draw, I would apply myself only to studying the form of inanimate objects," I said some...
ITALO CALVINO ...an archer, the moment he thinks he's experienced, is lost; every lion we encounter in our brief l...
ITALO CALVINO The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here...
ITALO CALVINO The naked man had lost hope now; he would never be able to return to the earth's surface;he would ne...
ITALO CALVINO Who knows whether, if I had given up smoking, I should really have become the strong perfect man I i...
ITALO SVEVO You see things less clearly when you open your eyes too wide.
ITALO SVEVO God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.
ITALO SVEVO There are three things I always forget. Names, faces and... the third I can't remember
ITALO SVEVO The problem is that remittances [from the U.S.] have made Salvadorans comfortable and they don't wan...
ITALO ESCRICH The problem is that remittances [from the United States] have made Salvadorans comfortable, and they...
ITALO ESCRICH