Lewis Mumford Quotes

Gollum is my picture of Dorian Gray. He will be with me for the rest of life, and I will grow to look more like him as I get older.

We've all got darkness inside us. And I've got quite a lot of darkness.

History ... is little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.

We all - if we are honest with ourselves, we all have these dark spaces within our souls that we don't always want to talk about or acknowledge.

Nothing should be permanent except struggle with the dark side within ourselves.

There is a little bit of evil in all of us, and it's very easy to draw that out.

Urges ... every man has urges. But the true measure of man is to admit them, to learn to control them. The Shield used to refer to themselves as the most dominant force in our universe. But that ain't the way I remember it. They fell victim to the faults of men. Their lust and greed and valor for glory, it led them right down in the pit, where they belong. Tonight, they'll burn for it. For I am no man. I am reborn. Our bond can never be broken, and our urges can never be satisfied.

The worst things weren't outside of you.

I didn't tell him that what I was most scared of, most haunted by, was something I didn't understand and could never run away from. It was myself.

The insides of our own minds are the scariest things there are.

Every man has his thorns, not of him, but in him, deep as bones.

There is not one among us in whom a devil does not dwell; at some time, on some point, that devil masters each of us... It is not having been in the Dark House, but having left it, that counts.

To rankling poison hast thou turned in me the milk of human kindness.

The unspeakable visions of the individual.

I crawled in the bathroom, looked in the mirror and saw the devil. It was me.

But even her demons she invested with inordinate beauty, consecrated them with the dignity of her attention.

We all invite our own devils, and we must exorcise our own.

A fallible being will fail somewhere.

It's part of what we call the Shadow, all the dark parts of us we can't face. It's the thing that, if we don't deal with it, eventually poisons our lives.

Sometimes I think there's a beast that lives inside me, in the cavern that's where my heart should be, and every now and then it fills every last inch of my skin, so that I can't help but do something inappropriate. Its breath is full of lies; it smells of spite.

The wolf howled under the leaves And spit out the prettiest feathers Of his meal of fowl: Like him I consume myself.

I'm afraid of the skeletons in my closet. I've got a whole cemetery full of them.

We know that virtue does not matter to history, and that crimes remain unpunished; but that every error had its consequences and venges itself unto the seventh generation.

I told him I was going to betray you, and betray Lyra, and he believed me because I was corrupt and full of wickedness; he looked so deep I felt sure he'd see the truth. But I lied too well. I was lying with every nerve and fiber and everything I'd ever done...I wanted him to find no good in me, and he didn't. There is none.

If you stare into the Abyss long enough the Abyss stares back at you.