To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance.
—Jean Genet, 1949
Archive
Quotes
Men were born to lie, and women to believe them.
—John Gay, 1728The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears the truth.
—Gaston Bachelard, 1960All revolutions devour their own children.
—Ernst Röhm, 1933A person who sees only fashion in fashion is a fool.
—Honoré de Balzac, 1830If you find excrement somewhere in the village, the chief was the one who put it there.
—Congolese proverbInfectious disease is one of the few genuine adventures left in the world.
—Hans Zinsser, 1935I am sure of this: that if everybody was to drink their bottle a day, there would not be half the disorders in the world there are now.
—Jane Austen, c. 1798I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.
—Susan Sontag, 1977Many a man who thinks to found a home discovers that he has merely opened a tavern for his friends.
—Norman Douglas, 1917If you were to ask me if I’d ever had the bad luck to miss my daily cocktail, I’d have to say that I doubt it; where certain things are concerned, I plan ahead.
—Luis Buñuel, 1983A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
—Herman Melville, 1851The true mission of American sports is to prepare young men for war.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower, c. 1952