There is no work of human hands which time does not wear away and reduce to dust.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 46 BC
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Quotes
Anything one is remembering is a repetition, but existing as a human being that is being, listening, and hearing is never repetition.
—Gertrude Stein, 1935A friend who is very near and dear may in time become as useless as a relative.
—George Ade, 1902There are some who, if a cat accidentally comes into the room, though they neither see it nor are told of it, will presently be in a sweat and ready to die away.
—Increase Mather, 1684Strangers are an endangered species.
—Adrienne Rich, 1980Everyone who is sick is someone else’s patient zero.
—Leslie Jamison, 2020Even members of the nobility, let alone persons of no consequence, would do well not to have children.
—Yoshida Kenko, c. 1330The various modes of religion which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true, by the philosophers equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful.
—Edward Gibbon, 1776Charity is murder and you know it.
—Dorothy Parker, 1956It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
—Frederick Douglass, 1852Is it a fact—or have I dreamed it—that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time?
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy, and temperamental: it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chawing a hunk of melon in the dust.
—Elizabeth Bowen, 1955The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
—Miguel de Cervantes, 1615