Democracy produces both heroes and villains, but it differs from a fascist state in that it does not produce a hero who is a villain.
—Margaret Halsey, 1946
Archive
Quotes
Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will—whatever we may think.
—Lawrence Durrell, 1957We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.
—D.H. Lawrence, 1928Can we not live without pleasure, who cannot but with pleasure die?
—Tertullian, c. 215It is a luxury to be understood.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1831These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession.
—Claude Monet, 1908It’s frightening to think that you mark your children merely by being yourself… it seems unfair. You can’t assume the responsibility for everything you do—or don’t do.
—Simone de Beauvoir, 1966To live for a time close to great minds is the best kind of education.
—John Buchan, 1940The peasants alone are revolutionary, for they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The starving peasant, outside the class system, is the first among the exploited to discover that only violence pays. For him there is no compromise, no possible coming to terms.
—Frantz Fanon, 1961Epitaph, n. An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906There is no work of human hands which time does not wear away and reduce to dust.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 46 BCAll the daughters of music shall be brought low.
—Ecclesiastes, c. 400 BCTravelers, poets, and liars are three words all of one significance.
—Richard Brathwaite, 1631