The world is for thousands a freak show; the images flicker past and vanish.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1776
Archive
Quotes
A friend who is very near and dear may in time become as useless as a relative.
—George Ade, 1902Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.
—William Hazlitt, 1819Give me chastity and continence, but not just now.
—Saint Augustine, 397There is no art without Eros.
—Max Frisch, 1983I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes.
—Maxine Hong Kingston, 1976It is easy to distinguish between the joking that reflects good breeding and that which is coarse—the one, if aired at an apposite moment of mental relaxation, is becoming in the most serious of men, whereas the other is unworthy of any free person, if the content is indecent or the expression obscene.
—Cicero, c. 44 BCMan is always a wizard to man, and the social world is at first magical.
—Jean-Paul Sartre, 1939Let the people think they govern, and they will be governed.
—William Penn, 1693Dreams have always been my friend, full of information, full of warnings.
—Doris Lessing, 1994Men worry over the great number of diseases, while doctors worry over the scarcity of effective remedies.
—Bian Qiao, c. 500 BCSuperstitions are habits rather than beliefs.
—Marlene Dietrich, 1962You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.
—Billie Holiday, 1956