Man has here two and a half minutes—one to smile, one to sigh, and half a one to love; for in the midst of this minute he dies.
—Jean Paul, 1795
Archive
Quotes
Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1871Music today is nothing more than the art of performing difficult pieces.
—Voltaire, 1759I even gave up, for a while, stopping by the window of the room to look out at the lights and deep, illuminated streets. That’s a form of dying, that losing contact with the city like that.
—Philip K. Dick, 1972If a parricide is more wicked than anyone who commits homicide—because he kills not merely a man but a near relative—without doubt worse still is he who kills himself, because there is none nearer to a man than himself.
—Saint Augustine, c. 420You are dust, and to dust you shall return.
—Book of Genesis, c. 800 BCReputation, like beavers and cloaks, shall last some people twice the time of others.
—Douglas Jerrold, 1840There is no work of human hands which time does not wear away and reduce to dust.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 46 BCPatriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.
—Denis Diderot, 1774Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
—George Eliot, 1857The believer in magic and miracles reflects on how to impose a law on nature—and, in brief, the religious cult is the outcome of this reflection.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1878Those who are awake have a world that is one and common, but each of those who are asleep turns aside into his own particular world.
—Heraclitus, c. 500 BCmy mind is
a big hunk of irrevocable nothing