Archive

Quotes

I tell you, there is such a thing as creative hate!

—Willa Cather, 1915

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

—Robert Byrd, 2005

Our allotted time is the passing of a shadow.

—Book of Wisdom, c. 100 BC

Far water cannot quench near fire.

—Japanese proverb

Years are nothing to me—they should be nothing to you. Who asked you to count them or to consider them? In the world of wild nature, time is measured by seasons only—the bird does not know how old it is—the rose tree does not count its birthdays!

—Marie Corelli, 1911

The traveler with nothing on him sings in the robber’s face.

—Juvenal, c. 125

Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

—T.S. Eliot, 1911

Fame is no sanctuary from the passing of youth. Suicide is much easier and more acceptable in Hollywood than growing old gracefully.

—Julie Burchill, 1986

 Do not lessen the time of following desire, for the wasting of time is an abomination to the spirit.

—Ptahhotep, c. 2350 BC

The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.

—Hermann Hesse, 1950

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

—Immanuel Kant, 1784

A passion for horses, players, and gladiators seems to be the epidemic folly of the times. The child receives it in his mother’s womb; he brings it with him into the world, and in a mind so possessed, what room for science, or any generous purpose?

—Tacitus, c. 100

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.

—Epictetus, c. 100