Imagination is the secret and marrow of civilization. It is the very eye of faith.
—Henry Ward Beecher, 1887
Archive
Quotes
Memory is more indelible than ink.
—Anita Loos, 1974Today’s friend may be tomorrow’s foe.
—Sophocles, 440 BCDemocracy is the fig leaf of elitism.
—Florence King, 1989Two crimes undid me: a poem and a mistake.
—Ovid, 10To outwit an enemy is not only just and glorious but profitable and sweet.
—Plutarch, c. 100Enemies to me are the sauce piquant to my dish of life.
—Elsa Maxwell, 1955I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.
—Albert Camus, 1957Make human nature your study wherever you reside—whatever the religion or the complexion, study their hearts.
—Ignatius Sancho, 1778Man has here two and a half minutes—one to smile, one to sigh, and half a one to love; for in the midst of this minute he dies.
—Jean Paul, 1795The more men are massed together, the more corrupt they become. Disease and vice are the sure results of overcrowded cities.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762It is delightful to read on the spot the impressions and opinions of tourists who visited a hundred years ago, in the vehicles and with the aesthetic prejudices of the period, the places which you are visiting now. The voyage ceases to be a mere tour through space; you travel through time and thought as well.
—Aldous Huxley, 1925A traveler’s chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad—as well as good—example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.
—Jonathan Swift, 1726