They say, “We only have the life of this world. We die and we live, and nothing destroys us but time.” Yet, not true knowledge have they of this—only belief.
—The Qur’an, c. 620
Archive
Quotes
Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.
—Erica Jong, 1973Civilization, a much-abused word, stands for a high matter quite apart from telephones and electric lights.
—Edith Hamilton, 1930At the start there’s always energy.
—Suzan-Lori Parks, 2006If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.
—Samuel Johnson, 1777The things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist.
—Ernest Hemingway, 1929Some people make stuff; other people have to buy it. And when we gave up making stuff, starting in the 1980s, we were left with the unique role of buying.
—Barbara Ehrenreich, 2008If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.
—Francis Bacon, 1615Men, my dear, are very queer animals—a mixture of horse nervousness, ass stubbornness, and camel malice.
—T. H. Huxley, 1895Imagination is the secret and marrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith.
—Henry Ward Beecher, 1887Music is our myth of the inner life.
—Susanne K. Langer, 1942Avoid the talk of men. For talk is mischievous, light, and easily raised, but hard to bear and difficult to be rid of. Talk never wholly dies away when many people voice her: even talk is in some ways divine.
—Hesiod, c. 700 BCOil dependency is not just an economic attachment but appears as a kind of cognitive compulsion.
—Peter Hitchcock, 2010