A Quote by Joyce Carol Oates

There was a Greek philosopher who taught that, of all things, not to have been born is the sweetest state. But I believe sleep is the sweetest state. You're dead, yet alive. There's no sensation so exquisite.

Joyce Carol Oates

Quote Topics

Alive All Things Been Believe Born Dead Exquisite Greek Greek Philosopher I Believe Philosopher Sensation Sleep State Sweetest Taught Things

Quote Author

Joyce Carol Oates
American - Writer
Born: June 16, 1938

The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides taught that the only things that are real are things which never change... and the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus taught that everything changes. If you superimpose their two views, you get this result: Nothing is real.

Philip K. Dick

The pleasures arising from a right understanding of the divine testimonies are of the most delightful order; earthly enjoyments are utterly contemptible if compared with them. The sweetest joys, yea, the sweetest of the sweetest falls to his portion who has God's truth to be his heritage.

Charles Spurgeon

O sleep! O gentle sleep! Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down And steep my senses in forgetfulness? Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee, And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber, Than in the perfum'd chambers of the great, Under the canopies of costly state, And lull'd with sound of sweetest melody?

William Shakespeare

Sweetest Echo, sweetest nymph, that liv'st unseen Within thy airy shell, By slow Meander's margent green, And in the violet-embroidered vale.

John Milton

The sweetest souls, like the sweetest flowers, soon canker in cities, and no purity is rarer there than the purity of delight.

Walter Savage Landor

gospel singing ... is the rawest, sweetest, uninhibited and exquisite sounds a person can make or hear. It isn't music, it's an entire experience you feel and live. A sound to rise you up again.

Lynda Barry

Sinners in their natural state lie dead, lifeless, and moveless; they can no more believe in Christ, nor repent, than a dead man can speak or walk: but, in virtue of the promise, the Spirit of life from Christ Jesus, at the time appointed, enters into the dead soul, and quickens it; so that it is no more morally dead, but alive, having new spiritual powers put into it, that were lost by Adam's fall.

Thomas Boston

Deep down, I reckon the sweetest moment will come when it's finally all over. When, at last, I know that I can stop fighting. Of course it'll also be a little sad. The sweetest moments, y'know, always come with just a little sadness.

Evander Holyfield

The guitar is the most unpredictable and least reliable musical instrument in existence...and also the sweetest, the warmest, the most delicate, whose melancholic voice awakes in our soul exquisite reveries.

Andres Segovia

I want somebody like my mom. My mom is a very charitable woman. She's the sweetest woman in the world. I'm looking for the second sweetest woman in the world. I'm looking for honesty and a big heart.

Jason Derulo

I believe nobody is stronger than the state. So the state would be strong, and we have to work altogether to make the strength of the state.

Najib Mikati

Among the blessings of love there is hardly one more exquisite than the sense that in uniting the beloved life to ours we can watch over its happiness, bring comfort where hardship was, and over memories of privation and suffering open the sweetest fountains of joy.

George Eliot

It is an error to divide people into the living and the dead: there are people who are dead-alive, and people who are alive-alive. The dead-alive also write, walk, speak, act. But they make no mistakes; only machines make no mistakes, and they produce only dead things. The alive-alive are constantly in error, in search, in questions, in torment.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

Nothing is important save the spiritual state that enables one to subjectify one's thoughts to a sensation and to think only of the sensation, all the while searching to express it.