One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can’t eat eight hours a day, nor drink for eight hours a day, nor make love for eight hours.
—William Faulkner, 1958
Archive
Quotes
Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.
—W. Somerset Maugham, 1896No preacher is listened to but time, which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have in vain tried to put into our heads before.
—Jonathan Swift, 1706It belongs to a nobleman to weep in an hour of disaster.
—Euripides, 412 BCMan’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
—Reinhold Niebuhr, 1944It was the men I deceived the most that I loved the most.
—Marguerite Duras, 1987Put national causes first and personal grudges last.
—Sima Qian, c. 91 BCImagine a number of men in chains, all under sentence of death, some of whom are each day butchered in the sight of the others; those remaining see their own condition in that of their fellows and, looking at each other with grief and despair, await their turn. This is an image of the human condition.
—Blaise Pascal, 1669It is permitted to learn even from an enemy.
—Ovid, c. 8The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution.
—Hannah Arendt, 1970My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.
—Karl Kraus, c. 1910Tell us your phobias and we will tell you what you are afraid of.
—Robert Benchley, 1935The world is for thousands a freak show; the images flicker past and vanish.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1776