If you have any soul worth expressing, it will show itself in your singing.
—John Ruskin, 1865
Archive
Quotes
Just to fill the hour—that is happiness.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844Man has here two and a half minutes—one to smile, one to sigh, and half a one to love; for in the midst of this minute he dies.
—Jean Paul, 1795Familiarity breeds contempt—and children.
—Mark Twain, c. 1900I’m doomed to die, right? Why should I care if I go to Hades either with gout in my leg or a runner’s grace? Plenty of people will carry me there.
—Nicharchus, c. 90Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.
—E.M. Forster, 1910The wonderful sea charmed me from the first.
—Joshua Slocum, 1900Moderation in all things.
—Terence, 166 BCGossip isn’t scandal and it’s not merely malicious. It’s chatter about the human race by lovers of the same.
—Phyllis McGinley, 1957Everybody says it; and what everybody says must be true.
—James Fenimore Cooper, 1844Every adolescent has that dream every century has that dream every revolutionary has that dream, to destroy the family.
—Gertrude Stein, 1940Insurgents are like conquerors: they must go forward; the moment they are stopped, they are lost.
—Duke of Wellington, c. 1819All God’s children are not beautiful. Most of God’s children are, in fact, barely presentable.
—Fran Lebowitz, 1978