Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.
—James Baldwin, 1961
Archive
Quotes
What timid man does not avoid contact with the sick, fearing lest he contract a disease so near?
—Ovid, c. 10Traveling is like gambling: it is ever connected with winning and losing, and generally where least expected we receive more or less than we hoped for.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1797Trade’s proud empire hastes to swift decay.
—Oliver Goldsmith, 1770Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
—Ecclesiastes, c. 250 BCHad Cleopatra’s nose been shorter, the whole face of the world would have changed.
—Blaise Pascal, 1658Sick, irritated, and the prey to a thousand discomforts, I go on with my labor like a true workingman, who, with sleeves rolled up, in the sweat of his brow, beats away at his anvil, not caring whether it rains or blows, hails or thunders.
—Gustave Flaubert, 1845There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. As well speak of a female liver.
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1898If you find excrement somewhere in the village, the chief was the one who put it there.
—Congolese proverbI think that to get under the surface and really appreciate the beauty of any country, one has to go there poor.
—Grace Moore, 1944Is this dying? Is this all? Is this all that I feared when I prayed against a hard death? Oh, I can bear this! I can bear it!
—Cotton Mather, 1728Cows are among the gentlest of breathing creatures; none show more passionate tenderness to their young when deprived of them—and, in short, I am not ashamed to profess a deep love for these quiet creatures.
—Thomas De Quincey, 1821There was no treachery too base for the world to commit.
—Virginia Woolf, 1927