There never is absolute birth nor complete death, in the strict sense, consisting in the separation of the soul from the body. What we call births are developments and growths, while what we call deaths are envelopments and diminutions.
—Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 1714
Archive
Quotes
The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.
—Anthony Burgess, 1972Attend to earth,
for it is to earth that kings are truly wedded.
The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease.
—Marianne Moore, 1935The power which the sea requires in the sailor makes a man of him very fast, and the change of shores and population clears his head of much nonsense of his wigwam.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1870I think that to get under the surface and really appreciate the beauty of any country, one has to go there poor.
—Grace Moore, 1944The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
—William Blake, 1793The more corrupt the state, the more numerous its laws.
—Tacitus, c. 110I have given up considering happiness as relevant.
—Edward Gorey, 1974Revolutionaries are greater sticklers for formality than conservatives.
—Italo Calvino, 1957It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
—The BibleThe less a man knows about the past and the present, the more insecure must prove to be his judgment of the future.
—Sigmund Freud, 1927My own experience is that a certain kind of genius among students is best brought out in bed.
—Allen Ginsberg, 1981