Great cities must ever be centers of light and darkness, the home of the best and the worst of our race, holding within themselves the highest talent for good and evil.
—Matthew Hale Smith, 1868
Archive
Quotes
If my books had been any worse I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better I should not have come.
—Raymond Chandler, 1945It is the little causes, long continued, which are considered as bringing about the greatest changes of the earth.
—James Hutton, 1795Uprootedness is by far the most dangerous malady to which human societies are exposed, for it is a self-propagating one.
—Simone Weil, 1943The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease.
—Marianne Moore, 1935Intolerance is evidence of impotence.
—Aleister Crowley, c. 1925Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
—Pablo Neruda, 1924Without doubt God is the universal moving force, but each being is moved according to the nature that God has given it. He directs angels, man, animals, brute matter, in sum all created things—but each according to its nature—and man having been created free, he is freely led. This rule is truly the eternal law and in it we must believe.
—Joseph de Maistre, 1821The day unravels what the night has woven.
—Walter Benjamin, 1929Infectious disease is one of the few genuine adventures left in the world.
—Hans Zinsser, 1935He makes his cook his merit, and the world visits his dinners and not him.
—Molière, 1666Some folks want their luck buttered.
—Thomas Hardy, 1886The dead are often just as living to us as the living are, only we cannot get them to believe it. They can come to us, but till we die we cannot go to them. To be dead is to be unable to understand that one is alive.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1888