Exile Quotes

I know how men in exile feed on dreams. (Aeschylus)
Only solitary men know the full joys of frienship. Others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile, his friends are everything. View quote
Willa Cather
I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and therefore I die in exile. View quote
Pope Gregory VII
Exile, for no other motive than ease, would be the last defeat, with no seed of future victory in it. View quote
Lois McMaster Bujold
Take up the White Man's burden -- send forth the best ye breed -- go, bind your sons to exile to serve your captives need. View quote
Rudyard Kipling
The generation of Isaiah did not require the detailed description; his account, "I saw the Lord," &c., sufficed. The generation of the Babylonian exile wanted to learn all the details. ...Isaiah was so familiar with it that he did not consider it necessary to communicate it to others as a new thing, especially as it was well known to the intelligent. View quote
Maimonides
And if the City falls and one survives he shall carry the City within on the roads of exile he shall be the City. View quote
Zbigniew Herbert
I grieve for you, how I mourn for you, who are so very dear to me, but again I can rejoice within my heart, not for nothing "have I labored," neither has my exile been "in vain." View quote
Saint Patrick
[As a screenwriter] I have a sense of exile from thought, a nostalgia of the quiet room and balanced mind. I am a writer, and there comes a time when that which I write has to belong to me, has to be written alone and in silence, with no one looking over my shoulder, no one telling me a better way to write it. It doesn't have to be great writing, it doesn't even have to be terribly good. It just has to be mine. View quote
Raymond Chandler
In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind is the real cause of our doing or not doing any action, but our inward opinions and principles. View quote
Epictetus
There are four great events in history, the siege of Troy, the life and crucifixion of Christ, the exile of Krishna in Brindaban and the colloquy on the field of Kurukshetra. The siege of Troy created Hellas, the exile in Brindaban created devotional religion, (for before there was only meditation and worship), Christ from his cross humanized Europe, the colloquy at Kurukshetra will yet liberate humanity. (Sri Aurobindo)
Is it possible that existence is our exile and nothingness our home? View quote
Emil Cioran
I leave you but the sound of many a word In mocking echoes haply overheard, I sang to heaven. My exile made me free, from world to world, from all worlds carried me. View quote
George Santayana
In exile one is nothing but a ghost ... I ceased to exist when I went into exile. View quote
Reinaldo Arenas
What captivity has been to the Jews, exile has been to the Irish. For us, the romance of our native land begins only after we have left home; it is really only with other people that we become Irishmen. View quote
Peter Ackroyd
[About Jews] By nature we are like all other human beings, yet our people is unlike others, because our life is different, our history is different, our teacher is the Exile. View quote
Isaac Leib Peretz
When some one reminded him that the people of Sinope had sentenced him to exile, he said, "And I sentenced them to stay at home." View quote
Diogenes of Sinope
I have known exile and a wild passion Of longing changing to a cold ache. King, beggar and fool, I have been all by turns, Knowing the body's sweetness, the mind's treason; Taliesin still, I show you a new world, risen, Stubborn with beauty, out of the heart's need. View quote
R. S. Thomas
The Jewish people have been in exile for 2,000 years; they have lived in hundreds of countries, spoken hundreds of languages and still they kept their old language, Hebrew. They kept their Aramaic, later their Yiddish; they kept their books; they kept their faith. View quote
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Everyone must come out of his Exile in his own way. View quote
Martin Buber
Remember, Orestes: you were part of my herd, you grazed in the fields along with my sheep. Your liberty is nothing but a mange eating away at you, it is nothing but an exile. (Jean-Paul Sartre)
There are those who regard this history of past strife and exile as better forgotten. But, to use the phrase of Yeats, let us not casually reduce "that great past to a trouble of fools." For we need not feel the bitterness of the past to discover its meaning for the present and the future. View quote
John F. Kennedy
I think the only positive thing that came from Uruguay's dictatorship was the spread of Montevideo natives around the world, and I continued writing about them from my various places of exile. View quote
Mario Benedetti
As a result of the historic catastrophe in which Titus of Rome destroyed Jerusalem and Israel was exiled from its land, I was born in one of the cities of the Exile. View quote
Shmuel Yosef Agnon
Well, I write in exile because I cannot return to my country, so I have no choice but to see myself as an exiled writer. View quote
Guillermo Cabrera Infante