If you have any soul worth expressing, it will show itself in your singing.
—John Ruskin, 1865Quotes
Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1735There are two things that will be believed of any man whatsoever, and one of them is that he has taken to drink.
—Booth Tarkington, 1914I have often been convinced that a democracy is incapable of empire.
—Thucydides, c. 404 BCOpposition is not necessarily enmity; it is merely misused and made an occasion for enmity.
—Sigmund Freud, 1930Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.
—Iris Murdoch, 1974As bad a dresser as I am, anything beats being judged by my character.
—David Sedaris, 1997Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one’s bath like a lump of sugar.
—Pablo Picasso, 1929In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.
—Herodotus, 440 BCThe envious die not once, but as often as the envied win applause.
—Baltasar Gracián, 1647Men are able to assist fortune but not to thwart her. They can weave her designs, but they cannot destroy them.
—Niccolò Machiavelli, 1531Today’s city is the most vulnerable social structure ever conceived by man.
—Martin Oppenheimer, 1969Travel is like adultery: one is always tempted to be unfaithful to one’s own country. To have imagination is inevitably to be dissatisfied with where you live.
—Anatole Broyard, 1989