Oil! Our secret god, our secret sharer, our magic wand, fulfiller of our every desire, our coconspirator, the sine qua non in all we do!
—Margaret Atwood, 2015
Archive
Quotes
Envy and hatred are apt to blind the eyes and render them unable to behold things as they are.
—Margaret of Valois, c. 1600The money we have is the means to liberty; that which we pursue is the means to slavery.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, c. 1770A person who sees only fashion in fashion is a fool.
—Honoré de Balzac, 1830I hate the present modes of living and getting a living. Farming and shopkeeping and working at a trade or profession are all odious to me. I should relish getting my living in a simple, primitive fashion.
—Henry David Thoreau, 1855Have you ever, looking up, seen a cloud like to a centaur, a leopard, a wolf, or a bull?
—Aristophanes, 423 BCBid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear.
—William Shakespeare, 1592Insurrection of thought always precedes insurrection of arms.
—Wendell Phillips, 1859I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.
—Orson Welles, 1953Commerce tends to wear off those prejudices which maintain distinction and animosity between nations.
—William Robertson, 1769There’s plenty of fire in the coldest flint!
—Rachel Field, 1939If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait forever.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1843The only places where American medicine can fully live up to its possibilities are the teaching hospitals.
—Bernard De Voto, 1951