“I think, therefore I am” is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches.
—Milan Kundera, 1990
Archive
Quotes
Modesty is a virtue not often found among poets, for almost every one of them thinks himself the greatest in the world.
—Miguel de Cervantes, 1615The day unravels what the night has woven.
—Walter Benjamin, 1929Traveling is the ruin of all happiness! There’s no looking at a building here after seeing Italy.
—Fanny Burney, 1782If a parricide is more wicked than anyone who commits homicide—because he kills not merely a man but a near relative—without doubt worse still is he who kills himself, because there is none nearer to a man than himself.
—Saint Augustine, c. 420And then, sir, there is this consideration: that if the abuse be enormous, nature will rise up and, claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system.
—Samuel Johnson, 1791Better no law than no law enforced.
—Danish proverbExchange is no robbery.
—German proverbThe sea hath no king but God alone.
—Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1881How gloriously legible are the constellations of the heavens!
—Anthony Trollope, 1859Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.
—Benjamin Franklin, c. 1732Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.
—Charles Lamb, 1833To place oneself in the position of God is painful: being God is equivalent to being tortured. For being God means that one is in harmony with all that is, including the worst. The existence of the worst evils is unimaginable unless God willed them.
—Georges Bataille, 1957