Do not ask me to be kind; just ask me to act as though I were.
—Jules Renard, 1898
Archive
Quotes
Unfortunately, humanitarianism has been the mark of an inhuman time.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1932Let us make our own mistakes, but let us take comfort in the knowledge that they are our own mistakes.
—Tom Mboya, 1958They say that gifts persuade even the gods.
—Euripides, 431 BCWhen one has a famishing thirst for happiness, one is apt to gulp down diversions wherever they are offered.
—Alice Hegan Rice, 1917Children are all foreigners. We treat them as such.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1839Living is an ailment that is relieved every sixteen hours by sleep. A palliative. Death is the cure.
—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas Chamfort, c. 1790The dead are often just as living to us as the living are, only we cannot get them to believe it. They can come to us, but till we die we cannot go to them. To be dead is to be unable to understand that one is alive.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1888At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.
—Søren Kierkegaard, 1850Carnal embrace is the practice of throwing one’s arms around a side of beef.
—Tom Stoppard, 1993The children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is so.
—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1983What is death? A scary mask. Take it off—see, it doesn’t bite.
—Epictetus, c. 110’Tis not a ridiculous devotion to say a prayer before a game at tables?
—Thomas Browne, 1642