And your very flesh shall be a great poem.
—Walt Whitman, 1855
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Quotes
If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.
—Jonathan Swift, 1706To place oneself in the position of God is painful: being God is equivalent to being tortured. For being God means that one is in harmony with all that is, including the worst. The existence of the worst evils is unimaginable unless God willed them.
—Georges Bataille, 1957When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.
—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1969Can you take your country with you on the soles of your shoes?
—Georg Büchner, 1835If 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, 1625Again, men in general desire the good, and not merely what their fathers had.
—Aristotle, c. 350 BCTell us your phobias and we will tell you what you are afraid of.
—Robert Benchley, 1935One thing alone not even God can do: to make undone whatever has been done.
—Aristotle, c. 350 BCThe belly is the reason why man does not mistake himself for a god.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1886Religion is by no means a proper subject of conversation in mixed company.
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 1754Anyone who doesn’t know foreign languages knows nothing of his own.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1821There are two things that will be believed of any man whatsoever, and one of them is that he has taken to drink.
—Booth Tarkington, 1914