I count myself in nothing else so happy / As in a soul remembering my good friends.
—William Shakespeare, c. 1595
Archive
Quotes
The life of spies is to know, not be known.
—George Herbert, c. 1621We and the dead ride quick at night.
—Gottfried August Bürger, 1773Disease makes men more physical, it leaves them nothing but body.
—Thomas Mann, 1924Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules, and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence; in other words it is war minus the shooting.
—George Orwell, 1945There are places one comes home to that one has never been to.
—Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, 1989Religion! How it dominates man’s mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion. But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began.
—Emma Goldman, 1910I never know quite when I’m not writing. Sometimes my wife comes up to me at a party and says, Dammit, Thurber, stop writing. She usually catches me in the middle of a paragraph. Or my daughter will look up from the dinner table and ask, Is he sick? No, my wife says, he’s writing something.
—James Thurber, 1955Every man has a lurking wish to appear considerable in his native place.
—Samuel Johnson, 1771I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.
—Thomas Hobbes, 1679The gratitude is greater than the gift.
—Pierre Corneille, 1641How many desolate creatures on the earth have learnt the simple dues of fellowship and social comfort in a hospital.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1857The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.
—Albert Einstein, 1936