To live exiled from a place you have known intimately is to experience sensory deprivation. A wide-awake coma.
—Gretel Ehrlich, 1994Quotes
Reality is always the foe of famous names.
—Petrarch, 1337A bull contents himself with one meadow, and one forest is enough for a thousand elephants; but the little body of a man devours more than all other living creatures.
—Seneca the Younger, c. 64I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes.
—Maxine Hong Kingston, 1976A maid that laughs is half taken.
—John Ray, 1670No families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1860I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1902I care. I care about it all. It takes too much energy not to care.
—Lorraine Hansberry, 1965It is very foolish to attack one’s enemy openly if one can injure him in secret.
—Giambattista Giraldi, 1543That which the sober man keeps in his breast, the drunken man lets out at the lips. Astute people, when they want to ascertain a man’s true character, make him drunk.
—Martin Luther, 1569Everything that deceives does so by casting a spell.
—Plato, c. 375 BCLet us leave this Europe which never stops talking of Man yet massacres him at every one of its street corners, at every corner of the world.
—Frantz Fanon, 1961Had Cleopatra’s nose been shorter, the whole face of the world would have changed.
—Blaise Pascal, 1658