To know intense joy without a strong bodily frame, one must have an enthusiastic soul.
—George Eliot, 1872
Archive
Quotes
Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.
—G.C. Lichtenberg, c. 1780No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.
—Hannah Arendt, 1958It is permitted to learn even from an enemy.
—Ovid, c. 8Nothing is so much to be shunned as sex relations.
—Saint Augustine, c. 387Man must be doing something, or fancy that he is doing something, for in him throbs the creative impulse; the mere basker in the sunshine is not a natural, but an abnormal man.
—Henry George, 1879If my books had been any worse I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better I should not have come.
—Raymond Chandler, 1945I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes.
—Maxine Hong Kingston, 1976Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you, because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.
—Roald Dahl, 1990You are dust, and to dust you shall return.
—Book of Genesis, c. 800 BCThe only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station.
—Hunter S. Thompson, 1971The planet keeps to the astronomer’s timetable, but the wind still bloweth almost where it listeth.
—John Henry Poynting, 1899There be beasts that, at a year old, observe more, and pursue that which is for their good more prudently, than a child can do at ten.
—Thomas Hobbes, 1651