Archive

Quotes

Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom.

—Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1480

Inventions that are not made, like babies that are not born, are rarely missed.

—John Kenneth Galbraith, 1958

For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation.

—Charles Baudelaire, c. 1865

Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it, and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, c. 1790

These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession.

—Claude Monet, 1908

There was a great deal of drinking among us but little drunkenness. We all seemed to feel that Prohibition was a personal affront and that we had a moral duty to undermine it.

—Elizabeth Anderson, 1969

I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.

—Anaïs Nin, 1950

Educate people without religion and you make them but clever devils.

—Arthur Wellesley, c. 1830

Nothing is more narrow-minded than chauvinism or racial hatred. To me all men are equal; there are flatheads everywhere and I despise them all equally.

—Karl Kraus, 1909

Men take diseases, one of another. Therefore let men take heed of their company.

—William Shakespeare, c. 1600

Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all. 

—Aristotle, c. 350 BC

You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.

—Billie Holiday, 1956

Usually speaking, the worst-bred person in company is a young traveler just returned from abroad.

—Jonathan Swift, c. 1730