The power which the sea requires in the sailor makes a man of him very fast, and the change of shores and population clears his head of much nonsense of his wigwam.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1870
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Quotes
What a torture to talk to filled heads that allow nothing from the outside to enter them.
—Joseph Joubert, 1807The people are the foundation of the state. If the foundations are firm, the state will be tranquil.
—Classic of History, c. 400 BCLet the French but have England, and they won’t want to conquer it.
—Horace Walpole, 1745Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.
—John Wilkes Booth, 1865The day unravels what the night has woven.
—Walter Benjamin, 1929One form of loneliness is to have a memory and no one to share it with.
—Phyllis Rose, 1991I would delight in music, but the music is discordant.
—Xie Lingyun, c. 425There is much difference between imitating a good man, and counterfeiting him.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1738All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.
—Toni Morrison, 1987The work of art, just like any fragment of human life considered in its deepest meaning, seems to me devoid of value if it does not offer the hardness, the rigidity, the regularity, the luster on every interior and exterior facet, of the crystal.
—André Breton, 1937It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.
—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1515You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.
—Joseph Conrad, 1900