A criminal may improve and become a decent member of society. A foreigner cannot improve. Once a foreigner, always a foreigner. There is no way out for him.
—George Mikes, 1946
Archive
Quotes
Not a change for the better in our human housekeeping has ever taken place that wise and good men have not opposed it—have not prophesied that the world would wake up to find its throat cut in consequence.
—James Russell Lowell, 1884Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.
—Noël Coward, 1930To put one’s trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1890There is no greater sorrow than to recall a happy time in the midst of wretchedness.
—Dante Alighieri, c. 1321Fire is a natural symbol of life and passion, though it is the one element in which nothing can actually live.
—Susanne K. Langer, 1942Before the earth could become an industrial garbage can, it had first to become a research laboratory.
—Theodore Roszak, 1972One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.
—E.B. White, 1958I cannot live without books, but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1815All pain is one malady with many names.
—Antiphanes, c. 400 BCAnd what will history say of me a thousand years hence?
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 59 BCThe charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy, and temperamental: it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chawing a hunk of melon in the dust.
—Elizabeth Bowen, 1955I do love cricket—it’s so very English.
—Sarah Bernhardt, c. 1908