Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don’t take it too seriously.
—Henry Miller, 1945
Archive
Quotes
He that would eat the nut must crack the shell.
—Plautus, c. 200 BCIn the name of Hippocrates doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.
—Luis Buñuel, 1983The human body is the best picture of the human soul.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein, c. 1947No one wins a quarrel by quarreling.
—German proverbThe people are the foundation of the state. If the foundations are firm, the state will be tranquil.
—Classic of History, c. 400 BCA win always seems shallow: it is the loss that is so profound and suggests nasty infinities.
—E.M. Forster, 1919Enemies to me are the sauce piquant to my dish of life.
—Elsa Maxwell, 1955The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.
—Dean Acheson, 1970Travelers, poets, and liars are three words all of one significance.
—Richard Brathwaite, 1631I would delight in music, but the music is discordant.
—Xie Lingyun, c. 425A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can’t think of anything else to do.
—W.H. Auden, 1946Nature contains no one constant form.
—Paul-Henri Dietrich d’Holbach, 1770