Archive

Quotes

More and more I like to take a train. I understand why the French prefer it to automobiling—it is so much more sociable, and of course these days so much more of an adventure, and the irregularity of its regularity is fascinating.

—Gertrude Stein, 1943

What is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 46 BC

Commerce tends to wear off those prejudices which maintain distinction and animosity between nations.

—William Robertson, 1769

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.

—John Lennon, 1970

People living deeply have no fear of death.

—Anaïs Nin, 1935

The fox knows lots of tricks, the hedgehog only one—but it’s a winner.

—Archilochus, c. 650 BC

If they prescribe a lot of remedies for some sickness or other, it means that the sickness is incurable.

—Anton Chekhov, 1904

So many men, so many opinions.

—Terence, 161 BC

If you have any soul worth expressing, it will show itself in your singing.

—John Ruskin, 1865

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

—Oscar Wilde, 1891

Just 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, 1903

The more corrupt the state, the more numerous its laws.

—Tacitus, c. 110

It is wretched business to be digging a well just as you’re dying of thirst.

—Plautus, c. 193 BC