Water astonishing and difficult altogether makes a meadow and a stroke.
—Gertrude Stein, 1914
Archive
Quotes
I have loved the stars too truly to be fearful of the night.
—Sarah Williams, 1868The only function of a school is to make self-education easier.
—Isaac Asimov, 1974The sea receives us in a proper way only when we are without clothes.
—Pliny the Elder, 77If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.
—Francis Bacon, 1625To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891Friendships begin with liking or gratitude—roots that can be pulled up.
—George Eliot, 1876It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
—Upton Sinclair, 1935No families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1860And then, sir, there is this consideration: that if the abuse be enormous, nature will rise up and, claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system.
—Samuel Johnson, 1791When they shout “Long live progress,” always ask, “Progress of what?”
—Stanisław Jerzy Lec, 1957The enlightened man says: I am body entirely and nothing beside.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1883Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.
—Jane Austen, 1815