A whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
—Herman Melville, 1851
Archive
Quotes
Brain, n. An apparatus with which we think that we think.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906The bathing was so delightful this morning, and Molly so pressing with me to enjoy myself, that I believe I stayed in rather too long, as since the middle of the day I have felt unreasonably tired. I shall be more careful another time, and shall not bathe tomorrow as I had before intended.
—Jane Austen, 1804Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.
—James Baldwin, 1961The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.
—Edward O. Wilson, 2009I went [to war] because I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want the glory or the pay; I wanted the right thing done.
—Louisa May Alcott, 1863The 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, 1862The future...something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
—C.S. Lewis, 1941Good or ill fortune is very little at our disposal.
—David Hume, 1742Laughter always arises from a gaiety of disposition, absolutely incompatible with contempt and indignation.
—Voltaire, 1736The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1919And what will history say of me a thousand years hence?
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 59 BCDo not ask me to be kind; just ask me to act as though I were.
—Jules Renard, 1898