The only competition worthy a wise man is with himself.
—Anna Jameson, 1846
Archive
Quotes
There was no treachery too base for the world to commit.
—Virginia Woolf, 1927I know what I have given you. I do not know what you have received.
—Antonio Porchia, 1943I’ve dreamed enough to have a drink.
—François Rabelais, 1546The best moment of love is when the lover leaves in the taxi.
—Michel Foucault, c. 1982The thirsty earth soaks up the rain, / And drinks, and gapes for drink again.
—Abraham Cowley, 1656A bad reputation is easy to come by, painful to bear, and difficult to clear.
—Hesiod, c. 700 BCIf law and justice do not attain their ends, the people will be unable to move hand or foot.
—Confucius, c. 500Secrets define us, they mark us, they set us apart from all the others. The secrets which we preserve provide a key to who we are, deep down.
—Nuruddin Farah, 1998The less a man knows about the past and the present, the more insecure must prove to be his judgment of the future.
—Sigmund Freud, 1927The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.
—Anthony Burgess, 1972Every city has a sex and an age which have nothing to do with demography. Rome is feminine. So is Odessa. London is a teenager, an urchin, and in this hasn’t changed since the time of Dickens. Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.
—John Berger, 1987If I see something sagging, dragging, or bagging, I’m going to go have the stuff tucked or plucked.
—Dolly Parton, 2003