Those things are better which are perfected by nature than those which are finished by art.
—Cicero, c. 45 BC
Archive
Quotes
I won’t be happy till I’m as famous as God.
—Madonna, c. 1985Now there is fame! Of all—hunger, misery, the incomprehension by the public—fame is by far the worst. It is the castigation by God of the artist. It is sad. It is true.
—Pablo Picasso, c. 1961Some men never recover from education.
—Oliver St. John Gogarty, 1954I never practice, I always play.
—Wanda Landowska, 1953Exchange is no robbery.
—German proverbWhat a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books; we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.
—Robert Burton, 1621He that raises a large family, does indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand…a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1786I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1928Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
—Arthur Schopenhauer, 1851Whatsoever is, is in God.
—Benedict de Spinoza, 1677Anything one is remembering is a repetition, but existing as a human being that is being, listening, and hearing is never repetition.
—Gertrude Stein, 1935Oil dependency is not just an economic attachment but appears as a kind of cognitive compulsion.
—Peter Hitchcock, 2010