William Beckford Quotes

#1. What is not conservative about saying, 'Don't go to war unless we go to war properly with a full declaration of war and no other way?'

Ron Paul

#2. And the eye became a body, the murky heart of a rose. The sinister shadow of an orchid. Or the indolent poppy balanced behind the ear of Baudelaire.

Patti Smith

#3. Woe to the rash mortal who seeks to know that of which he should remain ignorant, and to undertake that which surpasseth his power!

William Beckford

#4. A fish might more easily live on the apex of a rock than a man accustomed to crime live a life of virtue. ("The Story of Prince Barkiarokh")

William Beckford

#5. How could you have a slogan like "freedom is slavery" when the concept of freedom has been abolished?

George Orwell

#6. I fear I shall never be ... good for anything in this world, but composing airs, building towers, forming gardens, collecting old Japan, and writing a journey to China or the Moon.

William Thomas Beckford

#7. If you seem to be happy in this place of solitude, you will acquire a great reputation for wisdom, and I know, by my own experience, that under the cloak of a great reputation it is possible to hide whole treasures of folly. ("The Story of Princess Zulkais and the Prince Kalilah")

William Beckford

#8. Now that you've said hello, I'm afraid we move right into farewells. Hello, goodbye. Like flowers scattered in a storm, man's life is one long farewell, as they say,

Haruki Murakami

#9. I get the real moronic progressive economic plan now. The more we spend the richer we are. How brilliant ... Go figure these idiots.

Ziad K. Abdelnour

#10. Shortly after we were in bed I began my story, but made it so absurd, so long, and so tiresome, that, as my intention was, I sent her to sleep, and should have gone to sleep myself - but dark plots are ever wakeful. ("The Story of Prince Barkiarokh")

William Beckford

#11. It is a great evil to look upon mankind with too clear vision. You seem to be living among wild beasts, and you become a wild beast yourself. (""The Story of Prince Alasi and the Princess Firouzkah")

William Beckford

#12. The concepts of problem and solution can keep us stuck in thinking that there is an enemy and a saint or a right way and a wrong way.

Pema Chodron

#13. At these words, the fathers of the fifty boys cried out aloud; the mothers repeated their exclamations an octave higher; whilst the rest, without knowing the cause, soon drowned the voices of both, with still louder lamentations of their own.

William Beckford

#14. No course was open to me save to leap, with eyes self-bound, into the yawning abyss of the future.

William Beckford

#15. Because the truth is that if everyone's special all the time, then really, no one's special, so maybe all that's left is just to be perfect, because at least that's something you can measure.

Brenna Yovanoff