If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper that did his job well.
—Martin Luther King Jr., 1954
Archive
Quotes
All traveling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity.
—John Ruskin, 1856Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.
—Shimon Peres, 1995Disease is not of the body but of the place.
—Latin proverbIn the name of Hippocrates doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.
—Luis Buñuel, 1983Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.
—George Orwell, 1944People who’ve drunk neat wine don’t care a damn.
—Hipponax, c. 550 BCIf one hears bad music, it is one’s duty to drown it by conversation.
—Oscar Wilde, 1890Curses are like young chickens, they always come home to roost.
—Robert Southey, 1809To endeavor to forget anyone is a certain way of thinking of nothing else.
—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688The play is the tragedy “Man,” And its hero the conqueror worm.
—Edgar Allan Poe, 1843People can say what they like about the eternal verities, love and truth and so on, but nothing’s as eternal as the dishes.
—Margaret Mahy, 1985I have given up considering happiness as relevant.
—Edward Gorey, 1974