All Quotes

“In quella parte del libro de la mia memoria, dinanzi a la quale poco si potrebbe leggere, si trova una rubrica, la quale dice: Incipit vita nova. [1] In that book which is My memory ... On the first page That is the chapter when I first met you Appear the words ... Here begins a new life .”

“Chapter I, opening lines”

“Here beginneth the new life.”

“Translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti [3]”

“Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur mihi. Behold a God more powerful than I who comes to rule over me.”

“Chapter I (tr. Barbara Reynolds); of love .”

“ne le braccia avea madonna involta in un drappo dormendo. Poi la svegliava, e d'esto core ardendo lei paventosa umilmente pascea: appresso gir lo ne vedea piangendo. In his arms, my lady lay asleep, wrapped in a veil. He woke her then and trembling and obedient She ate that burning heart out of his hand ; Weeping I saw him then depart from me.”

“Chapter I, First Sonnet”

“Ella è quanto de ben pò far natura; per essemplo di lei bieltà si prova. She is the sum of nature's universe. To her perfection all of beauty tends.”

“Chapter XIV, lines 49”

“Fuck that. I want to be a superman.”

“I'm an instant star. Just add water and stir. Quoted in the chapter on Bowie in Valentines & Vitriol (1978) by Rex Reed”

“I get offered so many bad movies. And they're all raging queens or transvestites or Martians. 1983 Comment, quoted in Halliwell's Who's Who in the Movies 15th Edition (2003) by Leslie Halliwell, p. 60”

“Sermon From the Savoy”

“I think fame itself is not a rewarding thing. The most you can say is that it gets you a seat in restaurants. Interviewed in Q magazine”

“Music has given me over 40 years of extraordinary experiences. I can't say that life's pains or more tragic episodes have been diminished because of it. But it's allowed me so many moments of companionship when I've been lonely and a sublime means of communication when I wanted to touch people . It's been both my doorway of perception and the house that I live in. I only hope that it embraces you with the same lusty life force that it graciously offered me. Commencement Address for the Berklee College of Music, at Hynes Convention Center, Boston, Massachusetts”

“Of course I do!!!! its some cunt in a clown suit.”

“Looking back at David Bowie's invaluable advice for young artists”

“David Bowie: An Obituary”

“as though I had a lot of years behind me. Now I do, so there is a difference in the weight of memory. When you're young, you're still”

“The Theory of Moral Sentiments”

“Does a man of sense run after every silly tale of hobgoblins or fairies, and canvass particularly the evidence ? I never knew anyone, that examined and deliberated about nonsense who did not believe it before the end of his enquiries. Letters”

“The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster. On Suicide”

“As to the Approbation or Esteem of those Blockheads who call themselves the Public, & whom a Bookseller, a Lord, a Priest, or a Party can guide, I do most heartily despise it. Letter 138, To Gilbert Elliot of Minto; August 9, 1757”

“Heaven and Hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad; but the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue.”

“The conclusion [of the essay 'Of the Protestant Succession'] shows me a Whig, but a very sceptical one. Letter to Henry Home (9 February 1748), quoted in J. Y. T. Greig, The Letters of David Hume: Volume I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), p. 111”

“With regard to politics and the character of princes and great men, I think I am very moderate. My views of things are more conformable to Whig principles; my representation of persons to Tory prejudices. Nothing can so much prove that men commonly regard more persons than things, as to find that I am commonly numbered among the Tories. E. C. Mossner, Life of David Hume (Clarendon Press, 2001), p. 311.”

“Here am I who have written on all sorts of subjects calculated to excite hostility, moral, political, and religious, and yet I have no enemies”

“We must therefore glean up our experiments in this science from a cautious observation of human life, and take them as they appear in the common course of the world, by men's behaviour in company, in affairs, and in their pleasures. Where experiments of this kind are judiciously collected and compared, we may hope to establish on them a science, which will not be inferior in certainty, and will be much superior in utility to any other of human comprehension. Introduction”

“Now as we call every thing custom , which proceeds from a past repetition, without any new reasoning or conclusion, we may establish it as a certain truth, that all the belief, which follows upon any present impression, is deriv'd solely from that origin. Part 3, Section 8”