Revolutions are not about trifles, but they are produced by trifles.
—Aristotle, c. 350 BC
Archive
Quotes
Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.
—George Bernard Shaw, 1886Everything remembered is dear, endearing, touching, precious. At least the past is safe—though we didn’t know it at the time.
—Susan Sontag, 1973What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous.
—Voltaire, 1723Man punishes the action, but God the intention.
—Thomas Fuller, 1732I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts.
—Herman Melville, 1853The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.
—Vladimir Nabokov, 1941Without music life would be a mistake.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1889We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament and embrace it with passion if we want to be happy.
—Cyril Connolly, 1944The ability to store our data externally helps us imagine that our time is limitless, our space infinite.
—Carina Chocano, 2012Recreations should be as sauces to your meat, to sharpen your appetite unto the duties of your calling, and not to glut yourselves with them.
—Thomas Gouge, 1672If it were not for the intellectual snobs who pay in solid cash—the tribute which philistinism owes to culture, the arts would perish with their starving practitioners. Let us thank heaven for hypocrisy.
—Aldous Huxley, 1926Machines seem to sense that I am afraid of them. It makes them hostile.
—Sharyn McCrumb, 1990