If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.
—Francis Bacon, 1625
Archive
Quotes
Time will reveal everything. It is a babbler and speaks even when not asked.
—Euripides, c. 425 BCHe who sings frightens away his ills.
—Miguel de Cervantes, 1605Our entire history is merely the history of the waking life of man; nobody has yet considered the history of his sleeping life.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, c. 1780A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.
—Arthur Miller, 1961Give us this day our television, and an automobile, but deliver us from freedom.
—Jean-Luc Godard, 1966A miracle entails a degree of irrationality—not because it shocks reason, but because it makes no appeal to it.
—Emmanuel Lévinas, 1952I cannot bear a parent’s tears.
—Virgil, c. 25 BCAny serious attempt to do anything worthwhile is ritualistic.
—Derek Walcott, 1986Gossip isn’t scandal and it’s not merely malicious. It’s chatter about the human race by lovers of the same.
—Phyllis McGinley, 1957The first mistake of art is to assume that it’s serious.
—Lester Bangs, 1971There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. As well speak of a female liver.
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1898Speech is the mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so is he.
—Publilius Syrus, c. 50 BC