Night is torment. That is why people go to sleep. To avoid clear sight and torment.
—Dorothy M. Richardson, 1923
Archive
Quotes
Do you suppose that will change the sense of the morals, the fact that we can’t use morals as a means of judging the city because we couldn’t stand it? And that we’re changing our whole moral system to suit the fact that we’re living in a ridiculous way?
—Philip Johnson, 1965It is men who make a city, not walls or ships.
—Thucydides, 410 BCIf we pretend to respect the artist at all, we must allow him his freedom of choice, in the face, in particular cases, of innumerable presumptions that the choice will not fructify. Art derives a considerable part of its beneficial exercise from flying in the face of presumptions.
—Henry James, 1884There is no profit without another’s loss.
—Roman proverbThought depends absolutely on the stomach, but in spite of that, those who have the best stomachs are not the best thinkers.
—Voltaire, 1770Those who believe in freedom of the will have never loved and never hated.
—Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, 1893I do not amuse myself by thinking of dead people.
—Napoleon Bonaparte, 1807The fear of the Lord is true wisdom, and he who hath it not can in no way penetrate the true secrets of magic.
—Abraham the Jew, c. 1400A 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, 1726There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy’s life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.
—Mark Twain, 1876God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars.
—Martin LutherNothing is hidden from the eyes of the observing world.
—Aleksandr Pushkin, 1837