Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

To hit bottom is to fall from grace.

We know we are falling from grace, millennium.

We have advantages. We have a cushion to fall back on. This is abundance. A luxury of place and time. Something rare and wonderful. It's almost historically unprecedented. We must do extraordinary things. We have to. It would be absurd not to.

That walls should fall is the consequence of blowing your own trumpet.

I must indeed abide the Doom of Men whether I will or nill: the loss and the silence. But I say to you, King of the Numenoreans, not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Elves say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive.

Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness! This is the state of man: today he puts forth The tender leaves of hope, tomorrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honours thick upon him: The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, And - when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a-ripening - nips his root, And then he falls, as I do.

My fall began, as many stories do, with a girl.

You don't talk quite like a girl who has had no advantages.

Merit has rarely risen of itself, but a pebble or a twig is often quite sufficient for it to spring from to the highest ascent. There is usually some baseness before there is any elevation.

the higher the step of advancement, the heavier is the fall.

Only man can stop being fully man. He can ascend above all degres of universal existence and by the same token fall below the level of the basest of creatures.

The loss of sex polarity is part and parcel of the larger disintegration, the reflex of the soul's death, and coincident with the disappearance of great men, great deeds, great causes, great wars, etc.

All things human hang by a slender thread; and that which seemed to stand strong suddenly falls and sinks in ruins.

The human rainbow had been mutilated by machismo, racism, militarism and a lot of other isms, who have been terribly killing our greatness, our possible greatness, our possible beauty.

I've never really had any barrier to break I guess. I don't really have anything to rebel against. I'm quite lucky.

Shall we, because we walk on our hind feet, assume to ourselves only the privilege of imperishability?

We ought never to scoff at the wretched, for who can be sure of continued happiness?

So many times you can't get a foot in the door unless you're already in the room.

Pride ruined the angels.

Here lies a toppled god. His fall was not a small one. We did but build his pedestal, A narrow and a tall one.

That's the only sense in which I've been lucky: I have the kind of face to which cosmetics could be applied.

Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself And falls on the other side

In efforts to soar above our nature, we invariably fall below it.

If you lose self-control everything will fall.