What keeps the democracy alive at all but the hatred of excellence, the desire of the base to see no head higher than their own?
—Mary Renault, 1956
Archive
Quotes
The seeds of civilization are in every culture, but it is city life that brings them to fruition.
—Susanne K. Langer, 1962Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1755Power is so apt to be insolent, and Liberty to be saucy, that they are very seldom upon good terms.
—George Savile, c. 1690Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o’clock is a scoundrel.
—Samuel Johnson, c. 1770The mind of man is capable of anything.
—Guy de Maupassant, 1884I am sick and tired of publicity. I want no more of it. It puts me in a bad light. I just want to be forgotten.
—Al Capone, 1929We are able to find everything in our memory, which is like a dispensary or chemical laboratory in which chance steers our hand sometimes to a soothing drug and sometimes to a dangerous poison.
—Marcel Proust, c. 1922The brain is an unreliable organ, it is monstrously great, monstrously developed. Swollen, like a goiter.
—Aleksandr Blok, c. 1920The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty, and death of public opinion.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1902Every man takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.
—Arthur Schopenhauer, 1851The twilight is the crack between the worlds.
—Carlos Castaneda, 1968An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.
—George Eliot, 1866