Archive

Quotes

Appearances often are deceiving.

—Aesop, c. 550 BC

Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water.

—Zadie Smith, 2000

It is remarkable that only small birds properly sing.

—Charles Darwin, 1871

There’s plenty of water in the universe without life, but nowhere is there life without water.

—Sylvia Alice Earle, 1995

Avoid the law—the first loss is generally the least.

—Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee, 1844

Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.

—George Bernard Shaw, 1886

It would seem that in history it’s never a tooth for a tooth, but a thousand, a hundred thousand for one.

—Sybille Bedford, 1963

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

—Arthur Conan Doyle, 1891

Rejoice, young man, while you are young, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Follow the inclination of your heart and the desire of your eyes, but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment.

—Book of Ecclesiastes, c. 200 BC

True friendship withstands time, distance, and silence.

—Isabel Allende, 2000

Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

—Anacharsis, c. 550 BC

I love everyone now that I have gray hair.

—Polatkin, c. 1855

My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.

—Quentin Crisp, 1968