Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco pipes of those who diffuse it; it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.
—George Eliot, 1876
Archive
Quotes
To live outside the law, you must be honest.
—Bob Dylan, 1966Television is democracy at its ugliest.
—Paddy Chayefsky, 1976The whole secret of fencing consists but in two things, to give and not to receive.
—Molière, 1670I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts.
—Herman Melville, 1853My father! The sun is my father, and the earth is my mother, and on her bosom I will recline.
—Tecumseh, 1810I am sure of this: that if everybody was to drink their bottle a day, there would not be half the disorders in the world there are now.
—Jane Austen, c. 1798And to our age’s drowsy blood / Still shouts the inspiring sea.
—James Russell Lowell, 1848In meeting again after a separation, acquaintances ask after our outward life, friends after our inner life.
—Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, 1880It is wretched business to be digging a well just as you’re dying of thirst.
—Plautus, c. 193 BCThe distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.
—Donald Barthelme, 1964I hate the present modes of living and getting a living. Farming and shopkeeping and working at a trade or profession are all odious to me. I should relish getting my living in a simple, primitive fashion.
—Henry David Thoreau, 1855Play, wherein persons of condition, especially ladies, waste so much of their time, is a plain instance to me that men cannot be perfectly idle; they must be doing something, for how else could they sit so many hours toiling at that which generally gives more vexation than delight to people whilst they are actually engaged in it?
—John Locke, 1693