Survivors look back and see omens, messages they missed.
—Joan Didion, 2005
Archive
Quotes
Science is a cemetery of dead ideas.
—Miguel de Unamuno, 1913Do you not see how God is praised by those in the heavens and those on earth? The very birds praised Him as they wing their way.
—The Qur’an, c. 620The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.
—Leviticus, c. 600 BCIs this dying? Is this all? Is this all that I feared when I prayed against a hard death? Oh, I can bear this! I can bear it!
—Cotton Mather, 1728The self is like an infant: given free rein, it craves to suckle.
—al-Busiri, c. 1250All traveling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity.
—John Ruskin, 1856Our entire history is merely the history of the waking life of man; nobody has yet considered the history of his sleeping life.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, c. 1780When the missionaries first came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, “Let us pray.” We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.
—Desmond Tutu, 1984A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.
—Charles Baudelaire, 1852We must confess that at present the rich predominate, but the future will be for the virtuous and ingenious.
—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688my mind is
a big hunk of irrevocable nothing
The man in constant fear is every day condemned.
—Publilius Syrus, c. 50 BC