Archive

Quotes

Pushing someone toward liberty does not set her free; taking the chains off a prisoner does not give him freedom.

—Ken Bugul, 1982

Alone, alone, all, all alone, / Alone on a wide, wide sea!

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798

Understanding is a very dull occupation.

—Gertrude Stein, 1937

Just to fill the hour—that is happiness.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844

All pain is one malady with many names.

—Antiphanes, c. 400 BC

Nature never breaks her own laws.

—Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1500

Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth but not its twin.

—Barbara Kingsolver, 1990

Put national causes first and personal grudges last.

—Sima Qian, c. 91 BC

Charity is murder and you know it.

—Dorothy Parker, 1956

Revolutions are always verbose.

—Leon Trotsky, 1933

By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.

—Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1955

For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?

—Jane Austen, 1813

The life of the city never lets you go, nor do you ever want it to.

—Wallace Stevens, 1952