I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.
—Margaret Atwood, 1976
Archive
Quotes
Ashore it’s wine, women, and song; aboard it’s rum, bum, and concertina.
—British naval saying, c. 1800The sea serves the pirate as well as the trader.
—Prudentius, c. 405I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.
—Susan Sontag, 1977Night is torment. That is why people go to sleep. To avoid clear sight and torment.
—Dorothy M. Richardson, 1923What can you conceive more silly and extravagant than to suppose a man racking his brains and studying night and day how to fly?
—William Law, 1728Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
—George Washington, 1796Happiness is no laughing matter.
—Richard Whately, 1843Time’s ruins build eternity’s mansions.
—James Joyce, 1922Once suspicion is aroused, everything feeds it.
—Amelia Edith Barr, 1885Life is no way to treat an animal.
—Kurt Vonnegut, 2005One who is frivolous all day will never establish a household.
—Ptahhotep, c. 2400 BCWe are able to find everything in our memory, which is like a dispensary or chemical laboratory in which chance steers our hand sometimes to a soothing drug and sometimes to a dangerous poison.
—Marcel Proust, c. 1922