Archive

Quotes

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.

—Albert Camus, 1951

Under the wide and starry sky, / Dig the grave and let me lie.

—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1887

Are we not ourselves nature, nature without end?

—Stanisław Lem, 1961

The mind is led on, step by step, to defeat its own logic.

—Dai Vernon, 1994

Insurgents are like conquerors: they must go forward; the moment they are stopped, they are lost.

—Duke of Wellington, c. 1819

When the root lives on, the new leaves come back.

—Aeschylus, c. 458 BC

The greatest veneration one can show the law is to keep a watch on it.

—Nadine Gordimer, 1971

Whoever expects to walk peacefully in the world must be money’s guest.

—Norman O. Brown, 1959

Feasts must be solemn and rare, or else they cease to be feasts. 

—Aldous Huxley, 1929

Men are generally more pleased with a widespread than with a great reputation.

—Pliny the Younger, c. 110

It is wretched business to be digging a well just as you’re dying of thirst.

—Plautus, c. 193 BC

What is life but organized energy?

—Arthur C. Clarke, 1958

People react to fear, not love—they don’t teach that in Sunday school, but it’s true.

—Richard Nixon, 1975