Archive

Quotes

The great difficulty lies in trying to transpose last night’s moment to a day which has no knowledge of it.

—Zora Neale Hurston, 1942

Strength of mind is exercise, not rest.

—Alexander Pope, 1733

The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry to equanimity, receptivity, and peace is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of personal center of energy.

—William James, 1902

Life isn’t all beer and skittles, but beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form a good part of every Englishman’s education.

—Thomas Hughes, 1857

A garden must be looked into, and dressed as the body.

—George Herbert, 1640

Friends are ourselves.

—John Donne, 1603

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

—Thomas Jefferson, 1787

The mill will never grind with water that is past.

—Daniel McCallum, 1870

Some of us would be greatly astonished to learn the reasons why others respect us.

—Marquis de Vauvenargues, 1746

I don’t believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there’s one thing that’s dangerous for an artist, it’s precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it.

—Federico Fellini, c. 1950

Conservation is not merely a thing to be enshrined in outdoor museums, but a way of living on land.

—Aldo Leopold, 1933

And what will history say of me a thousand years hence?

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 59 BC

When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.

—St. Jerome, 395