Archive

Quotes

For sooner will men hold fire in their mouths than keep a secret.

—Petronius, c. 60

If you read somebody’s diary, you get what you deserve.

—David Sedaris, 2004

Nothing is hidden from the eyes of the observing world.

—Aleksandr Pushkin, 1837

A regime which combines perpetual surveillance with total indulgence is hardly conducive to healthy development.

—P.D. James, 1992

Secrets are rarely betrayed or discovered according to any program our fear has sketched out.

—George Eliot, 1860

We must not always talk in the marketplace of what happens to us in the forest.

—Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850

Secrets define us, they mark us, they set us apart from all the others. The secrets which we preserve provide a key to who we are, deep down.

—Nuruddin Farah, 1998

I will never again command an army in America if we must carry along paid spies. I will banish myself to some foreign country first.

—William Tecumseh Sherman, 1863

To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.

—Quentin Crisp, 1968
  •