A man is not idle, because he is absorbed in thought. There is visible labor and there is an invisible labor.
—Victor Hugo, 1862
Archive
Quotes
Attacks on me will do no harm, and silent contempt is the best answer to them.
—James Monroe, 1808To be a successful father… there’s one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don’t look at it for the first two years.
—Ernest Hemingway, 1954Those who are awake have a world that is one and common, but each of those who are asleep turns aside into his own particular world.
—Heraclitus, c. 500 BCIn every ill turn of fortune, the most unhappy sort of unfortunate man is the one who has been happy.
—Boethius, c. 520In the Middle Ages people were tourists because of their religion, whereas now they are tourists because tourism is their religion.
—Robert Runcie, 1988Dreams have always been my friend, full of information, full of warnings.
—Doris Lessing, 1994All the daughters of music shall be brought low.
—Ecclesiastes, c. 400 BCAfter midnight the moon set and I was alone with the stars. I have often said that the lure of flying is the lure of beauty, and I need no other flight to convince me that the reason flyers fly, whether they know it or not, is the aesthetic appeal of flying.
—Amelia Earhart, 1935The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.
—Agnes Repplier, 1929Now there is fame! Of all—hunger, misery, the incomprehension by the public—fame is by far the worst. It is the castigation by God of the artist. It is sad. It is true.
—Pablo Picasso, c. 1961For, say they, when cruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.
—Herman Melville, 1851A change of fortune hurts a wise man no more than a change of the moon.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1732