I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.
—Anaïs Nin, 1950
Archive
Quotes
You are dust, and to dust you shall return.
—Book of Genesis, c. 800 BCTo need to dominate others is to need others. The commander is dependent.
—Fernando Pessoa, c. 1935Avoid the talk of men. For talk is mischievous, light, and easily raised, but hard to bear and difficult to be rid of. Talk never wholly dies away when many people voice her: even talk is in some ways divine.
—Hesiod, c. 700 BCAs he brews, so shall he drink.
—Ben Jonson, 1598The spirit of revolution, the spirit of insurrection, is a spirit radically opposed to liberty.
—François Guizot, 1830What is food to one is to others bitter poison.
—Lucretius, 50 BCThe whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
—H.L. Mencken, 1921Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
—George Eliot, 1857The happy ending is our national belief.
—Mary McCarthy, 1947In revolutions men fall and rise. Long before this war is over, much as you hear me praised now, you may hear me cursed and insulted.
—William Tecumseh Sherman, 1864The one thing the world will never have enough of is the outrageous.
—Salvador Dalí, 1953Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.
—George W. Bush, 2004