Love is giving something you haven’t got to someone who doesn’t exist.
—Jacques LacanQuotes
The day unravels what the night has woven.
—Walter Benjamin, 1929No nation is fit to sit in judgment upon any other nation.
—Woodrow Wilson, 1915But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.
—Genesis, c. 900 BCDeath from the bubonic plague is rated, with crucifixion, among the nastiest human experiences of all.
—Guy R. Williams, 1975In the country gossip is a pastime; in the city it is a warfare.
—W.M.L. Jay, 1870The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.
—Sigmund Freud, 1912What is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 46 BCIf you read somebody’s diary, you get what you deserve.
—David Sedaris, 2004If the present be compared with the remote past, it is easily seen that in all cities and in all peoples there are the same desires and the same passions as there always were.
—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1513Appearances are a glimpse of the obscure.
—Anaxagoras, c. 450 BCFor the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation.
—Charles Baudelaire, c. 1865Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
—Reinhold Niebuhr, 1944