The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.
—Basho, c. 1690
Archive
Quotes
A man is not idle, because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is an invisible labor.
—Victor Hugo, 1862Diseases are not immutable entities but dynamic social constructions that have biographies of their own.
—Robert P. Hudson, 1983When we define democracy now, it must still be as a thing hoped for but not seen.
—Pearl S. Buck, 1941Seamen are the nearest to death and the furthest from God.
—Thomas Fuller, 1732For most of us, nighttime dreaming brings us closer to our identities and our power than any activity in the waking world.
—Walter Mosley, 2000Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules, and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence; in other words it is war minus the shooting.
—George Orwell, 1945Punishment is a sort of medicine.
—Aristotle, c. 340 BCThe sadness of the end of a career of an older athlete, with the betrayal of his body, is mirrored in the rest of us. Consciously or not, we know: there, soon, go I.
—Ira Berkow, 1987I’d like to be a machine, wouldn’t you?
—Andy Warhol, 1963A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.
—David Foster Wallace, 2000Revolutions are celebrated when they are no longer dangerous.
—Pierre Boulez, 1989I won’t be happy till I’m as famous as God.
—Madonna, c. 1985