There never is absolute birth nor complete death, in the strict sense, consisting in the separation of the soul from the body. What we call births are developments and growths, while what we call deaths are envelopments and diminutions.
—Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 1714
Archive
Quotes
A good dog, sir, deserves a good bone.
—Ben Jonson, 1633It would seem that in history it’s never a tooth for a tooth, but a thousand, a hundred thousand for one.
—Sybille Bedford, 1963The 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, 1937Under all speech that is good for anything, there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as eternity; speech is shallow as time.
—Thomas Carlyle, 1838Those who travel heedlessly from place to place, observing only their distance from each other and attending only to their accommodation at the inn at night, set out fools, and will certainly return so.
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 1747The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
—L.P. Hartley, 1953Conjecturing a Climate
Of unsuspended Suns –
Adds poignancy to Winter
All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The violence of revolutions is the violence of men who charge into a vacuum.
—John Kenneth Galbraith, 1977Resentment kills a fool, and envy slays the simple.
—Book of Job, c. 600 BCThe man in constant fear is every day condemned.
—Publilius Syrus, c. 50 BCThe god of music dwelleth out of doors.
—Edith M. Thomas, 1887Music today is nothing more than the art of performing difficult pieces.
—Voltaire, 1759