Archive

Quotes

Man and animals are really the conduit of food, the sepulcher of animals, and resting place of the dead, one causing the death of the other, making themselves the covering for the corruption of other dead bodies.

—Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1500

Be courteous to all but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.

—George Washington, 1783

Friends are ourselves.

—John Donne, 1603

It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mold, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.

—Edward Gibbon, c. 1790

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.

—Arthur Miller, 1961

Anyone who has passed through the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape.

—William Hazlitt, 1821

Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.

—Rosa Luxemburg, 1918

A regime which combines perpetual surveillance with total indulgence is hardly conducive to healthy development.

—P.D. James, 1992

A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.

—Herman Melville, 1851

Some things are privileged from jest—namely, religion, matters of state, great persons, all men’s present business of importance, and any case that deserves pity.

—Francis Bacon, 1597

Sanity is madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled.

—George Santayana, 1920

The twilight is the crack between the worlds.

—Carlos Castaneda, 1968

When one has a famishing thirst for happiness, one is apt to gulp down diversions wherever they are offered.

—Alice Hegan Rice, 1917