Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.
—C.S. Lewis, 1961
Archive
Quotes
In every ill turn of fortune, the most unhappy sort of unfortunate man is the one who has been happy.
—Boethius, c. 520Sick, irritated, and the prey to a thousand discomforts, I go on with my labor like a true workingman, who, with sleeves rolled up, in the sweat of his brow, beats away at his anvil, not caring whether it rains or blows, hails or thunders.
—Gustave Flaubert, 1845Revolution can never be forecast; it cannot be foretold; it comes of itself. Revolution is brewing and is bound to flare up.
—Vladimir Lenin, 1918There is no happiness like that of a young couple in a little house they have built themselves in a place of beauty and solitude.
—Annie Proulx, 2008Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.
—W. Somerset Maugham, 1896“Work” does not exist in a nonliterate world. The primitive hunter or fisherman did no work, any more than does the poet, painter, or thinker of today. Where the whole man is involved there is no work.
—Marshall McLuhan, 1964The Mediterranean has the colors of a mackerel, changeable I mean. You don’t always know if it is green or violet—you can’t even say it’s blue, because the next moment the changing light has taken on a tinge of pink or gray.
—Vincent van Gogh, 1888Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
—Henry Kissinger, 1972Tomorrow never comes, man. It’s all the same fucking day.
—Janis Joplin, 1972Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o’clock is a scoundrel.
—Samuel Johnson, c. 1770No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law.
—Emma Goldman, 1917Imagination continually outruns the creature it inhabits.
—Katherine Anne Porter, 1949