A change in the weather is sufficient to create the world and oneself anew.
—Marcel Proust, c. 1920Quotes
Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
—George Eliot, 1857Slang is as old as speech and the congregating together of people in cities. It is the result of crowding and excitement and artificial life.
—John Camden Hotten, 1859How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do.
—William James, 1902Happiness is no laughing matter.
—Richard Whately, 1843It is not a case we are treating; it is a living, palpitating, alas, too often suffering fellow creature.
—John Brown, 1904All those who suffer in the world do so because of their desire for their own happiness.
—Shantideva, c. 750I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes.
—Maxine Hong Kingston, 1976Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made—through disobedience and through rebellion.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.
—Theodor Adorno, 1951Revolution begins in putting on bright colors.
—Tennessee Williams, 1944A world is sooner destroyed than made.
—Thomas Burnet, 1684Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
—W.H. Auden, 1957