Water its living strength first shows, / When obstacles its course oppose.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1815
Archive
Quotes
Let my epitaph be, “Here lies Joseph, who failed in everything he undertook.”
—Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, 1790I won’t be happy till I’m as famous as God.
—Madonna, c. 1985Some of us would be greatly astonished to learn the reasons why others respect us.
—Marquis de Vauvenargues, 1746Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy.
—Alexander Hamilton, 1787Under all speech that is good for anything, there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as eternity; speech is shallow as time.
—Thomas Carlyle, 1838The land is full of bloody crimes, and the city is full of violence.
—The BibleA merchant may, perhaps, be a man of an enlarged mind, but there is nothing in trade connected with an enlarged mind.
—Samuel Johnson, 1773To desire immortality for the individual is really the same as wanting to perpetuate an error forever.
—Arthur Schopenhauer, 1819Sex is the last refuge of the miserable.
—Quentin Crisp, 1968War to the castles; peace to the cottages.
—Nicolas Chamfort, 1790The body says what words cannot.
—Martha Graham, 1985The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realize this: that the human has been roughly handled, but that it has advanced.
—Victor Hugo, 1862