If they prescribe a lot of remedies for some sickness or other, it means that the sickness is incurable.
—Anton Chekhov, 1904Quotes
Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom.
—Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1480Great inventors and discoverers seem to have made their discoveries and inventions, as it were, by the way, in the course of their everyday life.
—Elizabeth Charles, 1862From a man’s face, I can read his character. If I can see him walk, I know his thoughts.
—Gaius Petronius Arbiter, c. 60It costs a lot of money to be rich.
—Peter Boyle, 2002A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.
—Amiri Baraka, 1962I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. War is hell.
—William Tecumseh Sherman, 1879The worship of opinion is, at this day, the established religion of the United States.
—Harriet Martineau, 1839My own experience is that a certain kind of genius among students is best brought out in bed.
—Allen Ginsberg, 1981I’ve got some shit I’m conservative about and some shit I’m liberal about. Crime—I’m conservative. Prostitution—I’m liberal.
—Chris Rock, 2008Inventor, n. A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers, and springs and believes it civilization.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1911The thirsty earth soaks up the rain, / And drinks, and gapes for drink again.
—Abraham Cowley, 1656People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence, and they think they have seen something.
—Søren Kierkegaard, 1843