The world is made of the very stuff of the body.
—Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 1961
Archive
Quotes
Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.
—William Empson, 1928God is alive. Magic is afoot.
—Leonard Cohen, 1966One need merely visit the marketplace and the graveyard to determine whether a city is in both physical and metaphysical order.
—Ernst Jünger, 1977O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes.
—William Shakespeare, c. 1599It is impossible to please all the world and one’s father.
—Jean de La Fontaine, 1668To outwit an enemy is not only just and glorious but profitable and sweet.
—Plutarch, c. 100Refrigerators and television sets, or even rockets sent to the moon, do not change man into God.
—Czesław Miłosz, 1960I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.
—Xenocrates, c. 350 BCWhy is not a rat as good as a rabbit? Why should men eat shrimps and neglect cockroaches?
—Henry Ward Beecher, 1862All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.
—Havelock Ellis, 1921Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.
—Henry David Thoreau, 1852Such then is the human state, that to wish greatness for one’s country is to wish harm to one’s neighbors.
—Voltaire, 1764