One’s friends are divided into two classes, those one knows because one must and those one knows because one mustn’t.
—Sybil Taylor, 1922
Archive
Quotes
Hatred of domestic work is a natural and admirable result of civilization.
—Rebecca West, 1912A miracle entails a degree of irrationality—not because it shocks reason, but because it makes no appeal to it.
—Emmanuel Lévinas, 1952The law looks at no one’s face.
—Gabriel Okara, 1964The only competition worthy a wise man is with himself.
—Anna Jameson, 1846Water is the first principle of everything.
—Thales of Miletus, c. 600 BCThe true art of memory is the art of attention.
—Samuel Johnson, 1759The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.
—Maya Angelou, 1986A traveler’s chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad—as well as good—example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.
—Jonathan Swift, 1726To think ill of mankind, and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.
—William Hazlitt, 1823Is all our fire of shipwreck wood?
—Robert Browning, 1862A woman should never be seen eating or drinking unless it be lobster salad and champagne, the only truly feminine and becoming viands.
—Lord Byron, 1812If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper that did his job well.
—Martin Luther King Jr., 1954