Archive

Quotes

There is no small pleasure in sweet water.

—Ovid, c. 10

The body is an instrument which only gives off music when it is used as a body.

—Anaïs Nin, 1935

The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry to equanimity, receptivity, and peace is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of personal center of energy.

—William James, 1902

The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They indeed are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them. 

—Alexis de Tocqueville, 1840

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

—Immanuel Kant, 1784

When law can do no right,
Let it be lawful that law bar no wrong.

—William Shakespeare, c. 1594

Men are merriest when they are from home.

—William Shakespeare, 1599

Let us have peace, but let us have liberty, law, and justice first.

—Frederick Douglass, 1878

The belly is the teacher of the arts and bestower of invention.

—Persius, c. 55

Revolutions are always verbose.

—Leon Trotsky, 1933

Infectious disease is one of the few genuine adventures left in the world.

—Hans Zinsser, 1935

How sad a sight is human happiness to those whose thoughts can pierce beyond an hour!

—Edward Young, 1741

Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water.

—Zadie Smith, 2000