Any man could, if he were so inclined, be the sculptor of his own brain.
—Santiago Ramón y Cajal, 1897
Archive
Quotes
The newspaper is the natural enemy of the book, as the whore is of the decent woman.
—Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, 1858Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.
—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688Toil is man’s allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that’s more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.
—Herman Melville, 1849We are a commercial people. We cannot boast of our arts, our crafts, our cultivation; our boast is in the wealth we produce.
—Ida M. Tarbell, 1904The sea yields action to the body, meditation to the mind, the world to the world, all parts thereof to each part, by this art of arts—navigation.
—Samuel Purchas, 1613Nothing is more narrow-minded than chauvinism or racial hatred. To me all men are equal; there are flatheads everywhere and I despise them all equally.
—Karl Kraus, 1909Childhood has no forebodings—but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.
—George Eliot, 1860At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.
—Søren Kierkegaard, 1850The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.
—Leviticus, c. 600 BCI sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.
—Albert Camus, 1957Ah! Freedom is a noble thing!
—John Barbour, 1375My own experience is that a certain kind of genius among students is best brought out in bed.
—Allen Ginsberg, 1981