Archive

Quotes

To ensure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough; a police force is needed as well.

—Albert Camus, 1951

Nothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision.

—Robertson Davies, 1985

Any serious attempt to do anything worthwhile is ritualistic.

—Derek Walcott, 1986

Have you ever, looking up, seen a cloud like to a centaur, a leopard, a wolf, or a bull?

—Aristophanes, 423 BC

Curses are like young chickens, they always come home to roost.

—Robert Southey, 1809

The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts.

—Italo Calvino, 1967

All things are filled full of signs, and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another.

—Plotinus, c. 255

There are times when reality becomes too complex for oral communication. But legend gives it a form by which it pervades the whole world.

—Jean-Luc Godard, 1965

There is not so contemptible a plant or animal that does not confound the most enlarged understanding.

—John Locke, 1689

The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears the truth.

—Gaston Bachelard, 1960

On no other stage are the scenes shifted with a swiftness so like magic as on the great stage of history when once the hour strikes.

—Edward Bellamy, 1888

God is alive. Magic is afoot.

—Leonard Cohen, 1966

The fact is certain because it is impossible.

—Tertullian, c. 200