I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?
—Lord Byron, 1813Quotes
The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realize this: that the human has been roughly handled, but that it has advanced.
—Victor Hugo, 1862Every man takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.
—Arthur Schopenhauer, 1851As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
—Abraham Lincoln, c. 1858The work of art, just like any fragment of human life considered in its deepest meaning, seems to me devoid of value if it does not offer the hardness, the rigidity, the regularity, the luster on every interior and exterior facet, of the crystal.
—André Breton, 1937Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.
—George Orwell, 1944Travelers, poets, and liars are three words all of one significance.
—Richard Brathwaite, 1631Hospitality consists in a little fire, a little food, and an immense quiet.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1856Business? Why, it’s very simple; business is other people’s money.
—Alexandre Dumas, 1857No man ever distinguished himself who could not bear to be laughed at.
—Maria Edgeworth, 1809Among famous traitors of history, one might mention the weather.
—Ilka Chase, 1969To live exiled from a place you have known intimately is to experience sensory deprivation. A wide-awake coma.
—Gretel Ehrlich, 1994Machines seem to sense that I am afraid of them. It makes them hostile.
—Sharyn McCrumb, 1990