Julien Quotes

Therefore, since we may say, after such long experience, that religion does not imply exact honesty, we are authorized by the same reasons to think that atheism does not exclude it. ~ Julien Offray De La Mettrie

Copying is out of the question; only fools and impostors copy. No, the thing is to produce something as good, if possible, out of your own resources. And so begins the strange torture of the blank sheet of paper, where you must open a window that is not the one I spotted just now but one equally insistent in its truthfulness. ~ Julien Green

Make him stop looking at us like that."
"And how do you propose I do that?" Julien asked. ~ Ella Frank

Would you really have ... ?" said Julien.
"Almost certainly," I said. "I have deep-seated problems with authority figures."
"But you are one!"
"I know! I can only assume the universe has a really mean sense of humour. ~ Simon R. Green

Our life is a book that writes itself and whose principal themes sometimes escape us. We are like characters in a novel who do not always understand what the author wants of them. ~ Julien Green

This stretch through the fogbound forest gradually lulled Grange into his favorite daydream; in it he saw an image of his life: all that he had he carried with him; twenty feet away, the world grew dark, perspectives blurred, and there was nothing near him but this close halo of warm consciousness, this nest perched high above the vague earth. ~ Julien Gracq

Where they are setting up the market, it used to be a place for torture," Julien remarked, indicating the place in front of them.
"Wow," Ava said. "I know I said I wanted to ditch the romanticized idea of Paris with couples and hearts and flowers but I wasn't thinking of touring all the places they once did waterboarding. ~ Mandy Baggot

Politics bores you?" Bronsen said.
Julien smiled. "It does. Apologies, sir, and it is not that I haven't tried to be fascinated. But careful and meticulous research has suggested the hypothesis that all politicians are liars, fools, and tricksters, and I have as yet come across no evidence to the contrary. They can do great damage, and rarely any good. It is the job of the sensible man to try and protect civilization from their depradations. ~ Iain Pears

The bones said death was comin', and the bones never lied.
Eva Savoie leaned back in the rocking chair and pushed it into motion on the uneven wide-plank floor of the one-room cabin. Her grand pere Julien had built the place more than a century ago, pulling heavy cypress logs from the bayou and sawing them, one by one, into the thick planks she still walked across ever day.
She had never known Julien Savoie, but she knew of him. The curse that had stalked her family for three generations had started with her grandfather and what he'd done all those years ago.
What he'd brought with him to Whiskey Bayou with blood on his hands.
What had driven her daddy to shoot her mama, and then himself, before either turned forty-five.
What had led Eva's brother, Antoine, to drown in the bayou only a half mile from this cabin, leaving a wife and infant son behind.
What stalked Eva now. ~ Susannah Sandlin

Dostoevsky was writing about losers. The main character of The Iliad, Hector, is a loser. It's very boring to talk about winners. The real literature always talks about losers. Madame Bovary is a loser. Julien Sorel is a loser. I am doing only the same job. Losers are more fascinating. Winners are stupid … because usually they win by chance ~ Umberto Eco

For so long I have cursed this life, but in the end I can only come to accept it because I believe we all suffer from the anthology complex. We all compile these short stories that turn into fantasies. ~ M.B. Julien

This is a perfectly good picture. And if I didn't know you, I would be impressed and charmed. But I do know you."
He thought some more, wondering whether he dared say precisely what he felt, for he knew he could never explain exactly why the idea came to him. "It's the painting of a dutiful daughter," he said eventually, looking at her cautiously to see her reaction. "You want to please. You are always aware of what the person looking at this picture will think of it. Because of that you've missed something important. Does that make sense?"
She thought, then nodded. "All right," she said grudgingly and with just a touch of despair in her voice. "You win."
Julien grunted. "Have another go, then. I shall come back and come back until you figure it out."
"And you'll know?"
"You'll know. I will merely get the benefit of it. ~ Iain Pears

Thoughts fly and words go on foot. Therein lies all the drama of a writer. ~ Julien Green

Often, beyond the next turning, footfalls of a herd galloping across stone were heard, or further in the distance, with reassuring grunts, a wild boar could be seen, trotting with steady stride along the edge of the road with her sow and a whole procession of young in tow. And then one's heart beat faster upon advancing a little into the subtle light: one might have said that the path had suddenly become wild, thick with grass, its dark paving-slabs engulfed by nettles, blackthorn and sloe, so that it mingled up time past rather than crossing country-side, and perhaps it was going to issue forth, in the chiaroscuro of thicket smelling of moistened down and fresh grass, into one of those glades where animals spoke to men. ~ Julien Gracq

Parents are toxic to the children and children are poison to the parents. No one with childrens is 'appy. ~ Julien Grenier In WISHBONE

I'm too heartbroken to shed tears. ~ Maude Julien

A history of literature, unlike history as such, ought to list only victories, for its defeats are no victory for anyone. ~ Julien Gracq

It won't work. You see, he is a liar and a thief. And he's been one for too long. He can't retire now. In addition to which. He has become, I'm afraid, a hack.'
'He may be all those things but she knows he's not.'
'What gives her that curious idea?'
'She's been with him constantly for the last few days. She's seen him shaking with terror, exhausted, ready to quit. She's watched him pull himself together again and she's also seen him be warm and tender. And funny. Not famous-international-wit funny but really funny.'
'Do you think she's an idiot? Do you think she doesn't know what kind of man he is? Or what he needs?'
'And what he needs is L-O-V-E? Uh-uh it's too late. He is 43 years old. Or will be this October. He's been married twice, both times disastrously and there have been too many years of... too much dough, too much bad writing and too much whiskey. He's got nothing left inside to give. Even if he could, which he can't.'
'But that's not true. You can, you have. I just know it.'
'No, you don't. It's lousy. In any case, the problem is you're not in love with the script. You're in love with me. And why shouldn't you be? When suddenly, waltzing into your life comes this charming and relatively handsome stranger. Me. Smooth as silk, with a highly practised line of chatter, specifically designed to knock relatively unsophisticated chicks like you Miss Simpson, right on their ears. Which I'm terribly afraid I've done. Well if it's the last ~ Julien Duvivier

In Paris, Julien's position with regard to Madame de Renal would very soon have been simplified; but in Paris love is the child of the novels. The young tutor and his timid mistress would have found in three or four novels, and even in the lyrics of the Gymnase, a clear statement of their situation. The novels would have outlined for them the part to be played, shown them the model to copy; and this model, sooner or later, albeit without the slightest pleasure, and perhaps with reluctance, vanity would have compelled Julien to follow.

In a small town of the Aveyron or the Pyrenees, the slightest incident would have been made decisive by the ardour of the climate. Beneath our more sombre skies, a penniless young man, who is ambitious only because the refinement of his nature puts him in need of some of those pleasures which money provides, is in daily contact with a woman of thirty who is sincerely virtuous, occupied with her children, and never looks to novels for examples of conduct. Everything goes slowly, everything happens by degrees in the provinces: life is more natural. ~ Stendhal

Nicolas walked toward him. Ignoring the presence of the others nearby, he took Julien's chin in his hand and kissed him tenderly on the lips. Julien seemed chagrined at first, and then accepted the gesture. It was sweet, and had the air of a couple that had been together for a great long time.
Maric glanced away, embarrased by the intimacy, not to mention the fact that he hadn't quite realized the nature of the two warriors' relationship ealier. Not just comrades, then, and far more than close friend. The older Grey Wardens seemed unsurprised. ~ David Gaider

No, what numbed these fields, peopled with bad dreams was not the oppressive grip of a plague but rather an ailing retreat, a sort of sad widowhood. Man had started to subdue these vacant expanses, then had grown weary of eating into it, and now even the desire to preserve what had been claimed had perished. He had established everywhere an ebb, a sorrowful withdrawal. His cuttings into the forest, which were seen at long intervals, had lost their hard edges, their distinct notches: now a thick brushwood had driven its sabbath into the broad daylight of the glades, hiding the naked trunks as high as their lowest branches. ~ Julien Gracq

Mathilde made an effort to use the more intimate form; she was evidently more attentive to this unusual way of speaking than to what she was saying. This use of the singular form, stripped of the tone of affection, ceased, after a moment, to afford Julien any pleasure, he was astonished at the absence of happiness; finally, in order to feel it, he had recourse to his reason. He saw himself highly esteemed by this girl who was so proud, and never bestowed unrestricted praise; by this line of reasoning he arrived at a gratification of his self-esteem. ~ Stendhal

My greatest discovery has been my love of boredom and to get fun out of it. ~ Julien Torma

Perhaps the greatest consolation of the oppressed is to consider themselves superior to their tyrants. ~ Julien Green

I've tried to stay true, in my own fashion, to the ideas of The Sex Pistols, even while I was working with bands like Duran Duran or the Stones, whoever it might be. The thing that was attractive to me personally about videos in the beginning was that it was uncharted territory, and in a sense the record companies didn't know what they were doing. ~ Julien Temple

In another moment she had torn herself from his arms, lighted the candle, and Julien had all the difficulty in the world in preventing her from cutting off all one side of her hair. "I wish to remind myself," she told him, "that I am your servant: should my accursed pride ever make me forget it, show me these locks and say: "There is no question now of love, we are not concerned with the emotion that your heart may be feeling at this moment, you have sworn to obey, obey upon your honour. ~ Stendhal

The footman burst in, announcing, 'Monsieur le Duc de
.'
'Hold your tongue, you fool,' said the Duke as he entered the room. He said this so well, and with such majesty than Julien could not help thinking that knowing how to lose his temper with a footman was the whole extent of this great personage's knowledge. ~ Stendhal

destroy me. love me. warp my image in photoshop with filter presets


push me off the brink of sanity. edit my sister sister fan fiction without my permish ~ Heiko Julien

She had lost herself in this old work, her personality dissolving into it, so that she had been set free. The immortality of the soul lies in its dissolution; this was the cryptic comment that so frustrated Olivier and which Julien had only ever grasped as evidence for the history of a particular school of thought. He had known all about its history, but Julia knew what it meant. He found the realization strangely reassuring. ~ Iain Pears

The novelist is like a scout commissioned to go and see what is happening in the depth of the soul. He comes back and reports what he has observed. ~ Julien Green

The perversity of woman!' thought Julien. 'What pleasure, what instinct leads them to betray us? ~ Anonymous

Getting lost is not fatal. Almost every time, it will make your world. ~ Julien Smith

Besides, before contemplating starting a new life, you need to make something of this one. ~ Maude Julien

Here be dragons. ~ Julien Smith

Am I capable of deceiving my friend? Julien asked himself peevishly. This being, for whom hypocrisy and an absence of all sympathy were the usual methods of protecting himself, could not bear, this time, the thought of the slightest trickiness in dealing with a man for whom he had friendly feelings. ~ Stendhal

Who lives as a citizen, may write as a philosopher - but write as a philosopher, it is to teach materialism! ~ Julien Offray De La Mettrie

the very air I breathed in these empty, chilly halls ...seemed vaguely impregnated with a more volatile essence, the kind of which it is expressively said that they exist in the state of scents, traces which escape attention once they have roused it, and in whose subtle distillation time--a time which instead of devouring itself seemed here to decant and thicken itself like the lees of old wine, with that almost spiritual succulence by which certain noble vintages make the years themselves explode on the tongue--counted for almost everything. ~ Julien Gracq

At (UNHCR's) headquarters, I met extraordinary people, men and women, especially from the emergency team, who shared with me their passion, their dedication and their commitment to this organisation and refugees. They told me about the daily difficulties they have to face and also the joy they felt when they managed to save a person whose life was threatened. ~ Julien Clerc

That is indeed the best way to dumb down the masses: make them do the same thing over and over; let them have their fireworks every Bastille Day and let them gorge themselves every New Year's Eve. When the body repeats the same action, the mind adopts it and keeps the repetition going day and night, stopping all thought processes. ~ Maude Julien

When all hope is lost, remember that light can be found even in the deepest of oceans. ~ G.C. Julien

The man I am will always raise a protest against the man I wanted to be and the two will live together to the end, but the man I wanted to be will be the one on whom judgement will be passed. ~ Julien Green

Then of course there are the people who don't see their deaths coming. ~ M.B. Julien

The beautiful must be incongruous. ~ Julien Torma

Nothing is absolutely unjust. There is no real equity, no total grandeur, no pure vice, no absolute crime. ~ Julien Offray De La Mettrie

When the house is blown up, there's nothing to shut or open. ~ Julien Torma

In growing older, we become our parents. ~ Julien Green

Behind every flinch is a fear or an anxiety - sometimes rational, sometimes not. Without the fear, there is no flinch. But wiping out the fear isn't what's important - facing it is. ~ Julien Smith

Peace is only possible if men cease to place their happiness in the possession of things "which cannot be shared," and if they raise themselves to a point where they adopt an abstract principle superior to their egotisms. In other words, it can only be obtained by a betterment of human morality. ~ Julien Benda

These gentlemen, although of the highest nobility,' thought Julien, 'are not in the least boring like the people who come to dine with M. de La Mole; and I can see why,' he added a moment later,'they are not ashamed to be indecent. ~ Stendhal

The more you delay the process of extracting value from your network and channels, the faster you will build audience and good will. Then good will and value can be extracted more efficiently later on, when it matters. ~ Chris Brogan Julien Smith

The English, who eat their meat red and bloody, show the savagery that goes with such food. ~ Julien Offray De La Mettrie

You're at this place filled with a bunch of people who want to better their lives, but they need the help of others if they want even the smallest chance to succeed. At this place they tell you their stories, and then they tell you their dreams. You are sitting there, a tourist among people who you do not belong around, but these people, they intrigue you. They show you what it means to rise when you are down. They show you that even the bloodiest battles with your mind can in fact be won. ~ M.B. Julien

It's not the light that's attracting me, but the darkness that's driving me on. ~ Julien Torma

The truth is that judgment and fear will never stop, but they don't actually do anything. ~ Julien Smith

Luckily, I have music and books to calm the pandemonium in my head. ~ Maude Julien

The man of science, the artist, the philosopher are attached to their nations as much as the day-laborer and the merchant. ~ Julien Benda

Let us hope that good authors who are bad Christians will find salvation through the books they write. ~ Julien Green

Hunger justifies the middle classes. ~ Julien Torma

Sometimes we do things, without thinking, that make no sense to us until much later, and yet appear to have been prompted by the most alert part of our being. ~ Julien Green

Music comes to life inside me. It's no longer just a succession of notes. ~ Maude Julien

The literature of impotence is about to develop beyond measure. ~ Julien Torma

I didn't want to love you," he says. "I couldn't help it."

- Julien, Retribution ~ S.E. Lund

For us life is a fact, no less, and, above all, no more. ~ Julien Torma

No one has a problem with the first mile of a journey. Even an infant could do fine for a while. But it isn't the start that matters. It's the finish line. ~ Julien Smith

A redoubtable alchemy was at work behind impenetrable veils as the forest prepared it's nocturnal mysteries. ~ Julien Gracq

The best jokes are uncalled-for. ~ Julien Torma

It may be said that modern Europe with teachers who inform it that its realist instincts are beautiful, acts ill and honors what is ill. ~ Julien Benda

I no longer have any fear of pain because I'm the one inflicting it and can decide when it stops. ~ Maude Julien

Perhaps it's best to think of our friends as we remember them in our hearts, not as they are now. ~ Zane Julien

but the force of traditions, as in all crumbling empires, grows proportionately with the explicit revelation, in the machinery of government and commerce alike, of the preponderant action of all principles of inertia... ~ Julien Gracq

Sacrilege is acceptable only as a game. ~ Julien Torma

You can't settle for reaching other people's limits. You have to reach yours. ~ Julien Smith

I knew that we counted little in comparison with the universe, I knew that we were nothing; but to be so immeasurably nothing seems in some way both to overwhelm and at the same time to reassure. Those figures, those dimensions beyond the range of human thought, are utterly overpowering. Is there anything whatsoever to which we can cling? Amid that chaos of illusions into which we are cast headlong, there is one thing that stands out as true, and that is---love. All the rest is nothingness, an empty void. We peer down into a huge dark abyss. And we are afraid. ~ Julien Green

If people only knew what lies at the heart of my novels! What a tumult of desires these carefully written pages conceal! I sometimes have a loathing for the furious cravings that give me no peace except when I am working. ~ Julien Green

Everyone is born with psychic abilities. It's just a matter of knowing how to tap into it. ~ Julien Offray De La Mettrie

A scrupulous man will never produce a great novel. ~ Julien Green

Success works as a cycle - growth and contraction, balancing and unbalancing - all while you're encountering hurdles that get higher and higher over time. ~ Julien Smith

Every woman who has ever approached me about being in my circle of lovers knows that I'm a bachelor with no plans to get married. Thanks to New York's tabloids, it's practically common knowledge. And, to avoid any possibility of doubt or misunderstanding, I very clearly told her from the start what I tell every potential lover: I don't date anyone exclusively. Ever. ~ Zack Love

Those who are unwilling to face the flinch are obvious, too. Their eyes are dead. Their voices sound defeated. They have defensive body language. They're all talk. They see obstacles as assailants instead of adversaries. Their flinch is the elephant in the room, and they don't want to hear about it. Any fight you want to win, a habit of pushing past the flinch can make it happen. Once you have adjusted to the pressure, once you learn to flinch forward, you have the resolve to pass through the impassible. In fact, it becomes certain that you will - it's only a matter of time. ~ Julien Smith

Whiteness is filthy. ~ Julien Torma

I am the road running through Paris," says the Seine. 'I have carried off many images since you were a child and reflected many clouds. I am changeable, but as people are: I have my moments of happiness in the June dawn and my sinister times some December evenings. Above all I am inquisitive - you call it being in flood. We have something in common, you everlasting passers-by and I, the fleeing water, which is that we never go back: your time is my space. ~ Julien Green

I am probably exaggerating a little, but I owe my equilibrium to ink and paper. ~ Julien Green

They were completely vague. They expressed everything and nothing. 'It is the Aeolian harp of style,' thought Julien. 'Amid the most lofty thoughts about annihilation, death, the infinite, etc., I can see no reality save a shocking fear of ridicule. ~ Stendhal

It has become somewhat trite, nowadays, to say that after so many years of destruction it is a kind of miracle that Paris is still standing, a miracle we thrill to every day. But if the beauty of Paris has survived wars, how extraordinary that it can do nothing against the pickaxes of the Parisians themselves when they make up their minds to demolish something, nor against the vagaries of their architects left to their own devices! ~ Julien Green

I always felt there was kind of a millennial aspect to The Sex Pistols. ~ Julien Temple

Anti-clericalism and non-belief, have their bigots just as orthodoxy does. ~ Julien Green

No one should ever be deprived of a horizon. ~ Maude Julien

The greatest explorer on this earth never takes voyages as long as those of the man who descends to the depth of his heart. ~ Julien Green

You always go for the ones who don't really want you - she really wanted Adam Moorad, she had just been rejected coldly and subterraneanly by Julien - she was interested in thin ascetic strange intellectuals of San Francisco and Berkeley and not in big paranoiac bums of ships and railroads and novels and all that hatefulness which in myself is to myself so evident and so to others too - though and because ten years younger than I seeing none of my virtues which anyway had long been drowned under years of drugtaking and desiring to die, to give up, to give it all up and forget it all, to die in the dark star - it was I stuck out my hand, not she - ah time. ~ Jack Kerouac

Turn your mobile phone off for a few hours each day. Having nothing to do while you're waiting for a bus can be boring, but it's only when you're bored that the scary thoughts come to the surface. Use a dumb phone on the weekends to prevent yourself from checking your messages. ~ Julien Smith

I'm not sure about anything. I hate being in charge. I hate making the decisions. I'm terrified of losing Mark. I'm terrified of losing Emma. I want someone to take over. I'm not as strong as you think. The things I want are wrong and broken things to want. ~ Cassandra Clare

Oh, if there were only a true religion. Fool that I am, I see a Gothic cathedral and venerable stained-glass windows, and my weak heart conjures up the priest to fit the scene. My soul would understand him, my soul has need of him. I only find a nincompoop with dirty hair. ~ Stendhal

And trust me, none of those boys – including Julien – will give you a hard time about poppin' that sweet cherry of yours, in case you get the urge again." I laughed some more at her over-the-top style. ~ Zack Love

Nothing contemporary is as extreme or as strongly stated as what the Sex Pistols were able to do in their time. ~ Julien Temple

A child's fear is a world whose dark corners are quite unknown to grownup people; it has its sky and its abysses, a sky without stars, abysses into which no light can ever penetrate. ~ Julien Green

Your love is exactly what Julien said - powerful. It's intense, all-consuming, and takes two men to return it. ~ Ella Frank

There are cities that are damned for some people by the mere fact that they seem created to close off the distances that are the only reason for living. ~ Julien Gracq

I run back to the peephole and see all three of them as they walk past with these things in their hands, I can hear the woman who I assume is their mother telling them a joke. I know the joke, but when I first heard it a long time ago, it didn't make me laugh. When she's done, I can hear the kids laughing. The joke still doesn't make me laugh, what makes me laugh are the laughing kids. That high pitched fast paced laugh that kids have. It's not until we get older that this laugh becomes low and drawn out. Trying to figure out when it's appropriate to laugh and when it's not. ~ M.B. Julien

A novelist is like a scout commissioned to go and see what is happening in the depth of the soul. He comes back and reports what he has observed. He never lives on the surface but only inhabits the darkest regions ~ Julien Green

Challenge yourself by doing things that hurt, on purpose. Have a willpower practice, such as very hard exercise, meditation, endurance, or cold showers. Choose something that makes your brain scream with how hard it is, and try to tolerate it. The goal isn't just to get used to it. It's to understand that pain is something you can survive. ~ Julien Smith