The sea serves the pirate as well as the trader.
—Prudentius, c. 405
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Quotes
Any man could, if he were so inclined, be the sculptor of his own brain.
—Santiago Ramón y Cajal, 1897All traveling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity.
—John Ruskin, 1856All technologies should be assumed guilty until proven innocent.
—David Brower, 1992It is not right for a ruler who has the nation in his charge, a man with so much on his mind, to sleep all night.
—Homer, c. 750 BCI would much rather have men ask why I have no statue than why I have one.
—Cato the Elder, c. 184 BCThree may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1735To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel that discernment is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion—a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge. One may have that condition by fits only.
—George Eliot, c. 1872Better free in a strange land than a slave at home.
—German proverbTo be too conscious is an illness—a real thoroughgoing illness.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1864Now there is fame! Of all—hunger, misery, the incomprehension by the public—fame is by far the worst. It is the castigation by God of the artist. It is sad. It is true.
—Pablo Picasso, c. 1961How sad a sight is human happiness to those whose thoughts can pierce beyond an hour!
—Edward Young, 1741The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts.
—Italo Calvino, 1967