There’s folks ’ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away the water.
—George Eliot, 1859
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Quotes
What mighty contests rise from trivial things.
—Alexander Pope, 1712I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do—that was one of my favorite things about it—and when I first did it, I felt perverse.
—Diane Arbus, c. 1950There lurks in every human heart a desire of distinction which inclines every man first to hope and then to believe that nature has given him something peculiar to himself.
—Samuel Johnson, 1763The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy, and temperamental: it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chawing a hunk of melon in the dust.
—Elizabeth Bowen, 1955“I think, therefore I am” is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches.
—Milan Kundera, 1990I’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. 90Sport is the bloom and glow of a perfect health.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1838Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but most important, it finds homes for us everywhere.
—Hazel Rochman, 1995As the saying goes, an old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb.
—Chinua Achebe, 1958Don’t try to make a profit on a bad trade; just try to find the best place to get out.
—Linda Bradford Raschke, 1992Is it only the mouth and belly which are injured by hunger and thirst? Men’s minds are also injured by them.
—Mencius, 300 BCPolitics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
—Paul Valéry, 1943