A first-class man subsists on the matter he destroys.
—Saul Bellow, 1989
Archive
Quotes
When a coward sees a man he can beat, he becomes hungry for a fight.
—Chinua Achebe, 1960I never even saw the use of the sea. Many a sad heart has it caused, and many a sick stomach has it occasioned! The boldest sailor climbs on board with a heavy soul and leaps on land with a light spirit.
—Benjamin Disraeli, 1827He that raises a large family, does indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand…a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1786A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can’t think of anything else to do.
—W.H. Auden, 1946As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.
—Pope John Paul II, 1986A woman’s greatest glory is to be little talked about by men, whether for good or ill.
—Pericles, c. 450 BCAll successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The violence of revolutions is the violence of men who charge into a vacuum.
—John Kenneth Galbraith, 1977A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
—James Joyce, 1922My ideas are clear. My orders are precise. Within five years, Rome must appear marvelous to all the people of the world—vast, orderly, powerful, as in the time of the empire of Augustus.
—Benito Mussolini, 1929Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.
—Oscar Wilde, 1890The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
—L.P. Hartley, 1953I prefer liberty with unquiet to slavery with quiet.
—Sallust, c. 35 BC