The body is an instrument which only gives off music when it is used as a body.
—Anaïs Nin, 1935
Archive
Quotes
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.
—Book of Ecclesiastes, c. 250 BCSecrecy lies at the very core of power.
—Elias Canetti, 1960What will not attract a man’s stare at sea?—a gull, a turtle, a flying fish!
—Richard Burton, 1883Anyone who in discussion quotes authority uses his memory rather than his intellect.
—Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1500I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes.
—Maxine Hong Kingston, 1976The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.
—Donald Barthelme, 1964In settling an island, the first building erected by a Spaniard will be a church, by a Frenchman a fort, by a Dutchman a warehouse, and by an Englishman an alehouse.
—Francis Grose, 1787Those from whom we were born have long since departed, and those with whom we grew up exist only in memory. We, too, through the approach of death, become, as it were, trees growing on the sandy bank of a river.
—Bhartrihari, c. 400It would be madness, and inconsistency, to suppose that things which have never yet been performed can be performed without employing some hitherto untried means.
—Francis Bacon, 1620He who laugheth too much, hath the nature of a fool; he that laugheth not at all, hath the nature of an old cat.
—Thomas Fuller, 1732What one knows is, in youth, of little moment; they know enough who know how to learn.
—Henry Adams, 1907I have often been convinced that a democracy is incapable of empire.
—Thucydides, c. 404 BC