The dead are often just as living to us as the living are, only we cannot get them to believe it. They can come to us, but till we die we cannot go to them. To be dead is to be unable to understand that one is alive.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1888
Archive
Quotes
When the root lives on, the new leaves come back.
—Aeschylus, c. 458 BCAnimals are in possession of themselves; their soul is in possession of their body. But they have no right to their life, because they do not will it.
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1821The sea hath fish for every man.
—William Camden, 1605How sweet it is to have people point and say, “There he is.”
—Persius, c. 60Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891The older one grows, the more one likes indecency.
—Virginia Woolf, 1921Your piping-hot lie is the best of lies.
—Plautus, c. 200 BCThe righteous know the needs of their animals, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel.
—Book of Proverbs, c. 500 BCFlesh was the reason why oil painting was invented.
—Willem de Kooning, 1949There’s folks ’ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away the water.
—George Eliot, 1859Perish the universe, provided I have my revenge.
—Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac, 1654All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
—Oscar Wilde, 1895