Quotes by Belgian Authors - Page 2

Now is the time to become a myth.
Diane Von Furstenberg
There is good to be found within anything bad. Even within the death of your own father.
Jellis Vaes
For what are in reality the things we call ‘Wisdom,’ ‘Virtue,’ ‘Heroism,’ ‘sublime hours,’ and ‘great moments of life,’ but the moments when we have more or less issued forth from ourselves, and have been able to halt, be it only for an instant, on the step of one of the eternal gates whence we see that the faintest cry, the most colourless thought, and most nerveless gestures do not drop into nothingness; …
Maurice Maeterlinck
Art can blow us out of our pigeon hole. In deafness it may shout or scream, in blindness it may arrest our attention, in numbness it may shake up our mind. If we don’t sense anything at all and take everything for granted, art can kick us in the ass, give a conscience and make us aware. ("When is Art?")
Erik Pevernagie
Foulmouthed individuals seem to have their neuron systems replaced by colon structures, given that their terminology profusely consists of "sh*t and f*ck". ("Tolerance zero")
Erik Pevernagie
Is happiness a sort of blissful state of mind or just a kind of surreal propensity? It may be hard to recognize its very nature, if we remain guilelessly confined in a state of woeful unawareness or in a no-man’s-land of emotions. In their dogged and obstinate quest for the zenith of happiness, many forget to take pleasure in the small things of everyday and, thus, become disgruntled and depressed instead, which leads them to a mire of gloom. ("C’est quand le bonheur “)
Erik Pevernagie
Everybody wants what feels good; and if we wish a symphony of attention from a bunch of caring people and a harmony of happy sounds during our lifetime, we must not act like dark horses, saving up our emotions, but be bountiful to all significant others. ( “Axelle Red “)
Erik Pevernagie
Through dreams and ideas we are seduced to go back to particular places and instances of our past. In the course of the years, these singular moments and spaces of our history very often receive then another color and dimension. Our mind tries however to tame and keep in control the phantoms of times past. If not so, our memory can be subject to an irreversible mutilation. ( "The mutilated memory" )
Erik Pevernagie
If you know why you are here, if you have a reason – a purpose, you know why you are born – you know why you are alive and you will feel alive. Purpose is THE MOST IMPORTANT thing in the world to have.
Jellis Vaes
If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.
Maurice Maeterlinck
The most important relationship in your life is the relationship you have with yourself. Because no matter what happens, you will always be with yourself.
Diane Von Furstenberg
As regards the artists themselves, most of them gave up their freedom quite lightly, placing their art at the service of someone or something. As a rule, their concerns and their ambitions are those of any old careerist. I thus acquired a total distrust of art and artists, whether they were officially recognised or were endeavouring to become so, and I felt that I had nothing in common with this guild. I had a point of reference which held me elsewhere, namely that magic within art which I had encountered as a child.
René Magritte
One day it may feel as if energy and enthusiasm are quenched, feelings dried up and emotions scorched, love and affection tangled in a harsh and uninviting setting. Nothing seems to grow anymore. No seed. No flowers. No foreseeable hope. No conceivable prospects. Any blossom of expectation seems to have become an illusion and life appears to have come to a standstill. If no seed of loving care is sown in the untilled, abandoned land, no bud can come into flower. Singer Amy Winehouse felt like lying fallow in the ground of a wasteland "with tears dry, dying a hundred times, going back to black" and leaving eventually for a place of ultimate sorrow and heartbreak, for a point of no return. ( “Amour en friche” )
Erik Pevernagie
The main thing for inner contentment is to be in a state of grace. And there is an artistic state of grace, for art is a kind of religion.
Georges Rodenbach
It may be prodigious, but it's all Greek to me!
Hergé
I believe that poems die the moment they are outwardly expressed.
Maurice Maeterlinck
Look upon men and things with the inner eye, with its form and desire, never forgetting that the shadow they throw as they pass by, upon hillock or wall, is but the fleeting image of a mightier shadow, which, like the wing of an imperishable swan, floats over every soul that draws near to their soul. Do not believe that thoughts such as these can be mere ornaments, and without influence upon the lives of those who admit them. It is far more important that one’s life should be perceived than that it should be transformed; for no sooner has it been perceived, than it transforms itself of its own accord.
Maurice Maeterlinck
Removing yourself from the familiar and opting for the unfamiliar opens up the unknown. And within the unknown there are questions we have never asked ourselves; experiences we have never imagined; lessons we have never had a chance to learn. What we ultimately need when we are stuck within a bubble, is change. Another perspective of seeing and knowing what is possible. Traveling will open that up for you. The world will play its role; all you need to do, is pack your bags and allow it to happen.
Jellis Vaes
Our real life is not the life we live, and we feel that our deepest, nay, our most intimate thoughts are quite apart from ourselves, for we are other than our thoughts and our dreams. And it is only at special moments – it may be by merest accident – that we live our own life. Will the day ever dawn when we shall be what we are? …
Maurice Maeterlinck
When we fail to reflect on the undercurrents of the circumstances of our life, we may have permanent misgivings about the quality of our interpretations. A lucid reading of our acts and our desires helps us to avoid tumbling into a frustrating gap between what we expect and what others expect. (“Alors, tout a basculé”)
Erik Pevernagie
fear of change is like standing under a hot shower and knowing the moment you'll turn it off you'll be freezing cold
Erik Tanghe
Luck comes and goes; you have to seize it. Bad luck comes and goes; it must be overcome. But I will never, never sit at the side of the road showing my wounds and shouting, 'It's destiny'!
Jean Van Hamme
I’m in love with you,” I whispered, searching her eyes. i looked very pale and very scared, and a little…hopeful.
Dries Wils
When love has left us in the lurch and nothing ever strikes a chord anymore, we may come to realize a vacuum of the lost vibrations of happiness and an absence of the ethereal and exalting feel of harmony that we only become aware of, after time passes by and everything has expired. (“Amour en friche”)
Erik Pevernagie
...If only Dad hadn't cheated. If only Mom had found a way to be happier. If only Nina hadn't run away. If only I could deal with it better. 'If' and 'only' are the two most useless words in the human vocabulary, Dr. Hakim had made a habit of saying. They should never be used together in a sentence, because they speak of something that's beyond your ability to change. A waste of energy.
Harper Bliss
Everyday objects shriek aloud.
René Magritte
White stars don't mix with the dark blackness of the universe. If they did... everything would be grey
Erik Tanghe
In the middle of the night, things well up from the past that are not always cause for rejoicing--the unsolved, the painful encounters, the mistakes, the reasons for shame or woe. But all, good or bad, give me food for thought, food to grow on.
May Sarton
Even if only one person’s respect for animals increases, then writing Talon would have been worthwhile.
Christopher Gérard
Love is illiterate. Whether we write it big or small, we cannot read it. We might only guess. ( "I seek you" )
Erik Pevernagie
When the sun shines, there seems to be much more dust in the air.Dirt can only be seen and properly removed by flooding it with white light
Erik Tanghe
What a wonderful world it could be, when spiritual factions would choose to read sacred writings as colorful metaphors and not as bloody declarations of war. (“Is heaven a place in the sky?”)
Erik Pevernagie
Hooray! Hooray! The end of the world has been postponed!
Hergé
Things as they appear every day and as they are engraved in our memory, facts and occurrences as they are perceived by senses, create an intricate labyrinth in the mind. The way how things are experienced in our environment and how they react in the arsenal of our imagination, creates a torrent of inspiring ideas that flood the speedy highways of our brains. ( " Labyrinth of the mind " )
Erik Pevernagie
Life can be generous, but leaves us with a trilemma: How can we reconcile three diverse features: ‘I’, 'me' and the 'others'. Since the “I” entails what I want; the “me” what others expect of me and the “others” what others themselves want. The bridges between "individuality", “surroundings” and "otherness" can be abysmal and very often waiting to be restored. (“I am on my own side, but I can listen “ )
Erik Pevernagie
Have pity on them all, for it is we who are the real monsters.
Bernard Heuvelmans
You can not go back. That's why it's hard to choose. You have to make the right choice. As long, as you don't choose, everything remains possible.
Jaco Van Dormael
Problems, struggles, difficulties, whatever you want to call them, are normal. In fact, each and every person you see walking on the street, sitting in the metro, working out at the gym, wherever, is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Problems are the most human thing about being a human, and are one of the few things that each and every one of us has in common.
Jellis Vaes
How much your life sucks, or how awesome your life is, is really all determined by how much fear controls your life.
Jellis Vaes
I always knew the woman i wanted to be- I knew I wanted to be a woman who was independant
Diane Von Furstenburg
Behind every work of art lies the enormous pretension of exhibiting one's vision of the world. If such obvious arrogance is not counterbalanced by the tribulations of doubt, all that remains is a monster who is to art what a fanatic is to faith.
Amélie Nothomb
Distance is but metrics, unmeasurable is the heart
Dimitri Debaene
If the word frankly or sincerely is not uttered in the first ten minutes-or let us speak openly-then you are not in the presence of a genuine businessman and he will certainly go bankrupt.
Francoise Mallet-Joris
The body often contains emotional truths that words can too easily gloss over.
Esther Perel
When we allow ourselves to show some patience and take time to listen to the others, we may learn a lot about ourselves. Patience does not endure instant gratification, though, and self-knowledge may take a lifetime. (“I am on my own side, but I can listen “ )
Erik Pevernagie
It would take a while before the postmodern Narcissus perceived the ruins of society behind the emptiness of his mirror.
Paul Verhaeghe
Society conspires against her from early infancy. Her brain is steadily filled with plaster until it sets: ‘If you’re not married by the time you’re twenty-five, you’ll have good reason to be ashamed’; ‘if you laugh, you won’t look dignified’ ; ‘if your face betrays your feelings, you’ll look coarse’; ‘if you mention the existence of a single body hair, you’re repulsive’ ; ‘if a boy kisses you on the cheek in public, you’re a whore’; if you enjoy eating, you’re a pig’; ‘if you take pleasure in sleeping, you’re no better than a cow’; and so on.These precepts would be merely anecdotal if they weren’t taken so much to heart.
Amélie Nothomb
For inside all the weakness of old age the spirit God knows is as mercurial as it ever was.
May Sarton
He who knows himself is wise; yet have we no sooner acquired real consciousness of our being than we learn that true wisdom is a thing that lies far deeper than consciousness. The chief gain of increased consciousness is that it unveils an ever-loftier unconsciousness, on whose heights do the sources lie of the purest wisdom.
Maurice Maeterlinck
If we really want to know, who we are and recognize our identity, we have to find out the identity of the others. By making friends with the others, we are able to make friends with ourselves. At that moment, we can sense how everything falls into place. ( “ Steps in the unknown" )
Erik Pevernagie
Traveling solo is an incredible – life changing – journey, which I can recommend anyone to undertake. It’s the fear of being alone that prevents many people from daring to take the step to go on that journey. But as with many things, within that fear you’ll discover the greatest triumphs.
Jellis Vaes
It is only too evident that the invisible agitations of the kingdoms within us are arbitrarily set on foot by the thoughts we shelter. Our myriad intuitions are the veiled queens who steer our course through life, though we have no words in which to speak of them. How strangely do we diminish a thing as soon as we try to express it in words!
Maurice Maeterlinck
I still wonder how policy officials... can sit down at the table with their families and have any appetite for food, or go to sleep at night, knowing that they failed to act. Human beings were sacrificed for political convenience. This would be enough, I think, to turn any reasonable man into a prisoner of his own conscience for the rest of his life.
Paul Rusesabagina
As light splinters into darkness, new thoughts may take over in the mind and allow upbeat views to gain power. Thus and so, thoughtfulness readily opens a blistering sky in the faltering shadow of unawareness. ("Absence of Desire")
Erik Pevernagie
Many politicians are tantalizing storytellers, as they mix facts with fiction, grab our emotion and tell things, they want us to believe. Their factoids are unremittingly reiterated, take a life on their own and in the end become the very truth… until the bubble bursts.("What after bowling alone?" )
Erik Pevernagie
Life is a risk.
Diane Von Furstenberg
If words allow themselves to be handled, it is with the help of infinite carefulness. One has to welcome them, listen to the, before asking any service of them. Words are living things closely involved with human life.
Paul Nougé
For the painful essence of withdrawal does not reside in the present suffering it brings - withdrawal is painless on the level of the immediate moment - but in the prospect of suffering to come, the rich future that one can imagine one's torture enjoying.
Jean-Philippe Toussaint
We want life to make sense. If we don’t find meaning and orientation, we are bound to fabulate a living and invent an inspiring life story. When we write out a chosen script, we’ll have to make time to hunker down into attuning it to the hitches of the road map, time and again, with fractious patience. ( "Everybody his story" )
Erik Pevernagie
Some feel lucky, if they haven't got to be happy, as they don’t like their frame of mind to be unravelled and prefer to be left well enough alone. ( "C’est quand le bonheur ?" )
Erik Pevernagie