Every man must descend into the flesh to meet mankind.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1910
Archive
Quotes
History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.
—Theodor Adorno, c. 1946The chief merit of language is clearness, and we know that nothing detracts so much from this as do unfamiliar terms.
—Galen, c. 175We do not suffer by accident.
—Jane Austen, 1813The belly is the teacher of the arts and bestower of invention.
—Persius, c. 55There is no happiness like that of a young couple in a little house they have built themselves in a place of beauty and solitude.
—Annie Proulx, 2008Just as language no longer has anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connection with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.
—Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903I think that to get under the surface and really appreciate the beauty of any country, one has to go there poor.
—Grace Moore, 1944Exchange is no robbery.
—German proverbThe righteous know the needs of their animals, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel.
—Book of Proverbs, c. 500 BCDemocracy is the fig leaf of elitism.
—Florence King, 1989The various modes of religion which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true, by the philosophers equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful.
—Edward Gibbon, 1776When the missionaries first came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, “Let us pray.” We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.
—Desmond Tutu, 1984