Yquotes.com

 

And I always thought: the very simplest words
Must be enough. When I say what things are like
Everyone's heart must be torn to shreds.
That you'll go down if you don't stand up for yourself
Surely you see that.
--
"And I always thought" [Und ich dachte immer] (c. 1956), trans. Michael Hamburger in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 452

 

Bertolt Brecht

» Bertolt Brecht - all quotes »

Similar quotes

 

Now I know surely and forever,
However much I have blotted our
Waking love, its memory is still
there. And I know the web, the net,
The blind and crippled bird. For then, for
One brief instant it was not blind, nor
Trapped, not crippled. For one heart beat the
Heart was free and moved itself. O love,
I who am lost and damned with words,
Whose words are a business and an art,
I have no words. These words, this poem, this
Is all confusion and ignorance.
But I know that coached by your sweet heart,
My heart beat one free beat and sent
Through all my flesh the blood of truth.

 

Kenneth Rexroth

 

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them - words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller, but for want of an understanding ear.

 

Stephen King

 

A torn jacket is soon mended; but hard words bruise the heart of a child.

 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

I have to acknowledge what I need in my life. If I want peace, I have to acknowledge it. I have to say to myself, in the simplest of words, 'Yes. I feel the thirst for peace.' I can use fancy words to impress other people, but I cannot use fancy words to impress me. If I want to impress me, I have to speak the truth. Maybe to the world, truth is a scary word, but truth is what the heart wants to hear. That thirst needs to be quenched. Peace is what the heart needs to feel.

 

Maharaji (Prem Rawat)

 

I love to paint people torn by all the things they are torn by today in the rat race in New York.

 

Alice Neel