Archive

Quotes

Time’s ruins build eternity’s mansions.

—James Joyce, 1922

We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal.

—Tennessee Williams, 1953

A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.

—Amiri Baraka, 1962

In life our absent friend is far away: / But death may bring our friend exceeding near.

—Christina Rossetti, 1881

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

—Benjamin Franklin, 1776

Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented.

—Willem de Kooning, 1949

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

—Immanuel Kant, 1784

It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter.

—Lewis Strauss, 1954

Traveling is the ruin of all happiness! There’s no looking at a building here after seeing Italy.

—Fanny Burney, 1782

Freedom of the press is only guaranteed to those who own one.

—A.J. Liebling, 1960

You are dust, and to dust you shall return.

—Book of Genesis, c. 800 BC

There lurks in every human heart a desire of distinction which inclines every man first to hope and then to believe that nature has given him something peculiar to himself. 

—Samuel Johnson, 1763

The Church says that the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in the shadow than in the Church.

—Ferdinand Magellan, c. 1510