We must not always talk in the marketplace of what happens to us in the forest.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850
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Quotes
And, after all, what is a lie? ’Tis but the truth in masquerade.
—Lord Byron, 1822An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865They say that gifts persuade even the gods.
—Euripides, 431 BCHygienic law, like martial law, supersedes rights in crises.
—Samuel Hopkins Adams, 1913In the society of men, the truth resides now less in what things are than in what they are not. Our social realities are so ugly if seen in the light of exiled truth, and beauty is almost no longer possible if it is not a lie.
—R.D. Laing, 1967Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.
—William Empson, 1928Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.
—Bertrand Russell, 1930Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o’clock is a scoundrel.
—Samuel Johnson, c. 1770’Tis a portentous sign / When a man sweats and at the same time shivers.
—Plautus, c. 180 BCThe almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.
—Theodor Adorno, 1951We die of comfort and by conflict live.
—May Sarton, 1953The boy is, of all wild beasts, the most difficult to manage.
—Plato, c. 348 BC