The young always have the same problem—how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their elders and copying one another.
—Quentin Crisp, 1968
Archive
Quotes
He who laugheth too much, hath the nature of a fool; he that laugheth not at all, hath the nature of an old cat.
—Thomas Fuller, 1732I’m doomed to die, right? Why should I care if I go to Hades either with gout in my leg or a runner’s grace? Plenty of people will carry me there.
—Nicharchus, c. 90They say, “We only have the life of this world. We die and we live, and nothing destroys us but time.” Yet, not true knowledge have they of this—only belief.
—The Qur’an, c. 620The only equals are those who are equally rich.
—Burundian proverbHang work! I wish that all the year were holiday; I am sure that Indolence—indefeasible Indolence—is the true state of man.
—Charles Lamb, 1805If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.
—Francis Bacon, 1625Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.
—Ecclesiastes, c. 250 BCThe Romans would never have found time to conquer the world if they had been obliged first to learn Latin.
—Heinrich Heine, 1827Let us leave this Europe which never stops talking of Man yet massacres him at every one of its street corners, at every corner of the world.
—Frantz Fanon, 1961Happiness is a warm puppy.
—Charles Schulz, 1971Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
—E.B. White, 1944I’m afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.
—Aldous Huxley, 1925