Man’s great mission is not to conquer nature by main force but to cooperate with her intelligently but lovingly for his own purposes.
—Lewis Mumford, 1962
Archive
Quotes
Charity is murder and you know it.
—Dorothy Parker, 1956Every country has the government it deserves.
—Joseph de Maistre, 1811Celibacy goes deeper than the flesh.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1920Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?
—Marcel Marceau, 1958Water astonishing and difficult altogether makes a meadow and a stroke.
—Gertrude Stein, 1914Everyone knows about everybody in Hollywood—who sleeps with whom, who doesn’t sleep, who does it standing on his head or in the dentist’s chair.
—Rock Hudson, 1982In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness.
—Colette, 1944All law is of necessity defective in the beginning.
—Han Yu, c. 800The greatest veneration one can show the law is to keep a watch on it.
—Nadine Gordimer, 1971I quit life as from an inn, not as from a home.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 44 BCAs matron and mistress will differ in temper and tone, so will the friend be distinct from the faithless parasite.
—Horace, c. 20 BCI order that my funeral ceremonies be extremely modest, and that they take place at dawn or at the evening Ave Maria, without song or music.
—Giuseppe Verdi, 1900