All of the great musicians have borrowed from the songs of the common people.
—Antonín Dvořák, 1893
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Quotes
What is death? A scary mask. Take it off—see, it doesn’t bite.
—Epictetus, c. 110In every ill turn of fortune, the most unhappy sort of unfortunate man is the one who has been happy.
—Boethius, c. 520There’s plenty of water in the universe without life, but nowhere is there life without water.
—Sylvia Alice Earle, 1995I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.
—Orson Welles, 1953If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.
—Samuel Johnson, 1777Love lasteth as long as the money endureth.
—William Caxton, 1476Water has many ways of reminding us that when we are in it we are out of our element.
—Christopher Hitchens, 2008They exchange their home and sweet thresholds for exile, and seek under another sun another home.
—Virgil, c. 30 BCNo man ever distinguished himself who could not bear to be laughed at.
—Maria Edgeworth, 1809“Abroad,” that large home of ruined reputations.
—George Eliot, 1866Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape.
—Erich Fromm, 1947Some people make stuff; other people have to buy it. And when we gave up making stuff, starting in the 1980s, we were left with the unique role of buying.
—Barbara Ehrenreich, 2008