The history of the land has been written very largely in water.
—John Hodgdon Bradley Jr., 1935
Archive
Quotes
Thanks to the interstate highway system, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything.
—Charles Kuralt, c. 1980Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made—through disobedience and through rebellion.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.
—LaoziSlang is as old as speech and the congregating together of people in cities. It is the result of crowding and excitement and artificial life.
—John Camden Hotten, 1859The whole secret of fencing consists but in two things, to give and not to receive.
—Molière, 1670The envious die not once, but as often as the envied win applause.
—Baltasar Gracián, 1647All technologies should be assumed guilty until proven innocent.
—David Brower, 1992No one’s serious at seventeen.
—Arthur Rimbaud, 1870In life our absent friend is far away: / But death may bring our friend exceeding near.
—Christina Rossetti, 1881Quarreling must lead to disorder, and disorder exhaustion.
—Xunzi, c. 250 BCThe only places where American medicine can fully live up to its possibilities are the teaching hospitals.
—Bernard De Voto, 1951If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation.
—William Hazlitt, 1823