Childhood has no forebodings—but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.
—George Eliot, 1860
Archive
Quotes
It belongs to a nobleman to weep in an hour of disaster.
—Euripides, 412 BCHang work! I wish that all the year were holiday; I am sure that Indolence—indefeasible Indolence—is the true state of man.
—Charles Lamb, 1805Communities do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.
—Benjamin Disraeli, 1863One thing alone not even God can do: to make undone whatever has been done.
—Aristotle, c. 350 BCThough this be madness, yet there is method in’t.
—William Shakespeare, 1603Many a man who thinks to found a home discovers that he has merely opened a tavern for his friends.
—Norman Douglas, 1917Revolutionaries are greater sticklers for formality than conservatives.
—Italo Calvino, 1957While gossip among women is universally ridiculed as low and trivial, gossip among men, especially if it is about women, is called theory, or idea, or fact.
—Andrea Dworkin, 1983It is men who make a city, not walls or ships.
—Thucydides, 410 BCAnd then, sir, there is this consideration: that if the abuse be enormous, nature will rise up and, claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system.
—Samuel Johnson, 1791A mind lively and at ease can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.
—Jane Austen, 1815As far as I can see, the history of experimental art in the twentieth century is intimately bound up with the experience of intoxification.
—Will Self, 1994