Understanding is a very dull occupation.
—Gertrude Stein, 1937
Archive
Quotes
Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will—whatever we may think.
—Lawrence Durrell, 1957And your very flesh shall be a great poem.
—Walt Whitman, 1855I curse the night, yet doth from day me hide.
—William Drummond, 1616I’d like to be a machine, wouldn’t you?
—Andy Warhol, 1963The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution.
—Hannah Arendt, 1970To endeavor to forget anyone is a certain way of thinking of nothing else.
—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king.
—Elizabeth I, 1588Life is no way to treat an animal.
—Kurt Vonnegut, 2005Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.
—Jeremy Bentham, c. 1832A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.
—Jane Austen, 1814You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.
—Mario Cuomo, 1985No nation was ever ruined by trade.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1774