If we pretend to respect the artist at all, we must allow him his freedom of choice, in the face, in particular cases, of innumerable presumptions that the choice will not fructify. Art derives a considerable part of its beneficial exercise from flying in the face of presumptions.
—Henry James, 1884
Archive
Quotes
I will never again command an army in America if we must carry along paid spies. I will banish myself to some foreign country first.
—William Tecumseh Sherman, 1863I do not mean to call an elephant a vulgar animal, but if you think about him carefully, you will find that his nonvulgarity consists in such gentleness as is possible to elephantine nature—not in his insensitive hide, nor in his clumsy foot, but in the way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way; and in his sensitive trunk, and still more sensitive mind, and capability of pique on points of honor.
—John Ruskin, 1860Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo.
—Matsuo Basho, c. 1685The life of the city never lets you go, nor do you ever want it to.
—Wallace Stevens, 1952Information can tell us everything. It has all the answers. But they are answers to questions we have not asked, and which doubtless don’t even arise.
—Jean Baudrillard, c. 1987The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes “sightseeing.”
—Daniel Boorstin, 1961Many are the wonders of the world, and none so wonderful as man.
—Sophocles, c. 441 BCThe family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1919The mind of man is capable of anything.
—Guy de Maupassant, 1884I cannot bear a parent’s tears.
—Virgil, c. 25 BCThe only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They indeed are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them.
—Alexis de Tocqueville, 1840Speech is the mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so is he.
—Publilius Syrus, c. 50 BC