To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891
Archive
Quotes
Hang work! I wish that all the year were holiday; I am sure that Indolence—indefeasible Indolence—is the true state of man.
—Charles Lamb, 1805A miracle entails a degree of irrationality—not because it shocks reason, but because it makes no appeal to it.
—Emmanuel Lévinas, 1952Comedy, like sodomy, is an unnatural act.
—Marty Feldman, 1969It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
—Frederick Douglass, 1852The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears the truth.
—Gaston Bachelard, 1960Disease is not of the body but of the place.
—Latin proverbThe breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.
—Vladimir Nabokov, 1941I prefer liberty with unquiet to slavery with quiet.
—Sallust, c. 35 BCPlay, wherein persons of condition, especially ladies, waste so much of their time, is a plain instance to me that men cannot be perfectly idle; they must be doing something, for how else could they sit so many hours toiling at that which generally gives more vexation than delight to people whilst they are actually engaged in it?
—John Locke, 1693Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.
—Joseph Stalin, 1934Refrigerators and television sets, or even rockets sent to the moon, do not change man into God.
—Czesław Miłosz, 1960Man is merely a more perfect animal than the rest. He reasons better.
—Napoleon Bonaparte, 1816