It is impossible to translate the poets. Can you translate music?
—Voltaire, c. 1732
Archive
Quotes
The law’s made to take care o’ raskills.
—George Eliot, 1860A self-made man is one who believes in luck and sends his son to Oxford.
—Christina Stead, 1938At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.
—Rose Macaulay, 1925People who’ve drunk neat wine don’t care a damn.
—Hipponax, c. 550 BCAll the daughters of music shall be brought low.
—Ecclesiastes, c. 400 BCJust as language no longer has anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connection with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.
—Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903Despotism subjects a nation to one tyrant—democracy to many.
—Marguerite Gardiner, 1839Death renders all equal.
—Claudian, c. 395I shall embrace my rival—until I suffocate him.
—Jean Racine, 1669Casting lots causes contentions to cease, and keeps the mighty apart.
—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BCAs to the sea itself, love it you cannot. Why should you? I will never believe again the sea was ever loved by anyone whose life was married to it. It is the creation of omnipotence, which is not of humankind and understandable, and so the springs of its behavior are hidden.
—H.M. Tomlinson, 1912Labor is no disgrace.
—Hesiod, c. 700 BC