Archive

Quotes

Seafarers go to sleep in the evening not knowing whether they will find themselves at the bottom of the sea the next morning.

—Jean de Joinville, c. 1305

We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament and embrace it with passion if we want to be happy.

—Cyril Connolly, 1944

One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.

—Oscar Wilde, 1894

After each night we are emptier: our mysteries and our griefs have leaked away into our dreams.

—E.M. Cioran, 1949

When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.

—St. Jerome, 395

As to the sea itself, love it you cannot. Why should you? I will never believe again the sea was ever loved by anyone whose life was married to it. It is the creation of omnipotence, which is not of humankind and understandable, and so the springs of its behavior are hidden.

—H.M. Tomlinson, 1912

I curse the night, yet doth from day me hide.

—William Drummond, 1616

If a parricide is more wicked than anyone who commits homicide—because he kills not merely a man but a near relative—without doubt worse still is he who kills himself, because there is none nearer to a man than himself. 

—Saint Augustine, c. 420

I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.

—Anaïs Nin, 1950

Alcohol is the monarch of liquids.

—Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, 1825

The planet keeps to the astronomer’s timetable, but the wind still bloweth almost where it listeth.

—John Henry Poynting, 1899

Give me chastity and continence, but not just now.

—Saint Augustine, 397

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

—Mark Twain, 1893