Archive

Quotes

Any man could, if he were so inclined, be the sculptor of his own brain.

—Santiago Ramón y Cajal, 1897

The newspaper is the natural enemy of the book, as the whore is of the decent woman.

—Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, 1858

Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.

—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688

Toil is man’s allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that’s more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.

—Herman Melville, 1849

We are a commercial people. We cannot boast of our arts, our crafts, our cultivation; our boast is in the wealth we produce.

—Ida M. Tarbell, 1904

The sea yields action to the body, meditation to the mind, the world to the world, all parts thereof to each part, by this art of arts—navigation.

—Samuel Purchas, 1613

Nothing is more narrow-minded than chauvinism or racial hatred. To me all men are equal; there are flatheads everywhere and I despise them all equally.

—Karl Kraus, 1909

Childhood has no forebodings—but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.

—George Eliot, 1860

At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.

—Søren Kierkegaard, 1850

The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.

—Leviticus, c. 600 BC

I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.

—Albert Camus, 1957

Ah! Freedom is a noble thing!

—John Barbour, 1375

My own experience is that a certain kind of genius among students is best brought out in bed.

—Allen Ginsberg, 1981