Friendship is a plant that loves the sun—thrives ill under clouds.
—Bronson Alcott, 1872Quotes
Misfortune, n. The kind of fortune that never misses.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906We are able to find everything in our memory, which is like a dispensary or chemical laboratory in which chance steers our hand sometimes to a soothing drug and sometimes to a dangerous poison.
—Marcel Proust, c. 1922Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together.
—Anaïs Nin, 1939Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.
—Alexander Pope, 1738I have been a stranger here in my own land all my life.
—Sophocles, c. 441 BCThe seeds of civilization are in every culture, but it is city life that brings them to fruition.
—Susanne K. Langer, 1962Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.
—Benjamin Franklin, c. 1732We get a deal o’ useless things about us, only because we’ve got the money to spend.
—George Eliot, 1860Language is the house of being. In its home human beings dwell. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home.
—Martin Heidegger, 1949The true art of memory is the art of attention.
—Samuel Johnson, 1759“I think, therefore I am” is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches.
—Milan Kundera, 1990The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
—Wendell Berry, 1983