The sole business of a seaman onshore who has to go to sea again is to take as much pleasure as he can.
—Leigh Hunt, 1820
Archive
Quotes
A regime which combines perpetual surveillance with total indulgence is hardly conducive to healthy development.
—P.D. James, 1992A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
—George Bernard Shaw, 1903The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station.
—Hunter S. Thompson, 1971That is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great.
—Willa Cather, 1918Water is the first principle of everything.
—Thales of Miletus, c. 600 BCArt is making something out of nothing and selling it.
—Frank Zappa, c. 1975There is a vital force in rumor. Though crushed to earth, to all intents and purposes buried, it can rise again without apparent effort.
—Eleanor Robson Belmont, 1957The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy, and temperamental: it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chawing a hunk of melon in the dust.
—Elizabeth Bowen, 1955Laughter always arises from a gaiety of disposition, absolutely incompatible with contempt and indignation.
—Voltaire, 1736In life our absent friend is far away: / But death may bring our friend exceeding near.
—Christina Rossetti, 1881Language is the house of being. In its home human beings dwell. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home.
—Martin Heidegger, 1949I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.
—John Maynard Keynes, 1917