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Quotes

Youth, youth, springtime of beauty.

—Anthem of the National Fascist Party, c. 1924

I’ve been bathing in the poem / Of star-infused and milky sea / Devouring the azure greens.

—Arthur Rimbaud, 1871

We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink, for dining alone is leading the life of a lion or wolf. 

—Epicurus, c. 300 BC

As usual, what we call “progress” is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance.

—Havelock Ellis, 1914

If one hears bad music, it is one’s duty to drown it by conversation.

—Oscar Wilde, 1890

I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue than why I have one.

—Cato the Elder, c. 184 BC

If the heavens were all parchment, and the trees of the forest all pens, and every human being were a scribe, it would still be impossible to record all that I have learned from my teachers.

—Jochanan ben Zakkai, c. 75

Fashion, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.

—Ambrose Bierce, 1911

Who hears the fishes when they cry?

—Henry David Thoreau, 1849

They are trying to make me into a fixed star. I am an irregular planet.

—Martin Luther, c. 1530

To call a fashion wearable is the kiss of death. No new fashion worth its salt is ever wearable.

—Eugenia Sheppard, 1960

Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.

—Lucretius, c. 58 BC

Memory is like the moon, which hath its new, its full, and its wane.

—Margaret Cavendish, 1655