Of all objects that I have ever seen, there is none which affects my imagination so much as the sea or ocean. A troubled ocean, to a man who sails upon it, is, I think, the biggest object that he can see in motion, and consequently gives his imagination one of the highest kinds of pleasure that can arise from greatness.
—Joseph Addison, 1712
Archive
Quotes
Music today is nothing more than the art of performing difficult pieces.
—Voltaire, 1759Time rushes toward us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation.
—Tennessee Williams, 1951Time robs us of all, even of memory.
—Virgil, c. 40 BCVery shy people don’t even want to take up the space that their body actually takes up.
—Andy Warhol, 1975I’ve been on more laps than a napkin.
—Mae WestAh, there are no children nowadays.
—Molière, 1673Secrecy lies at the very core of power.
—Elias Canetti, 1960It is easy to distinguish between the joking that reflects good breeding and that which is coarse—the one, if aired at an apposite moment of mental relaxation, is becoming in the most serious of men, whereas the other is unworthy of any free person, if the content is indecent or the expression obscene.
—Cicero, c. 44 BCBy night an atheist half believes a God.
—Edward Young, c. 1745Diseases, at least many of them, are like human beings. They are born, they flourish, and they die.
—David Riesman, 1937Drugs, cataplasms, and whiskey are stupid substitutes for the dignity and potency of divine mind and its efficacy to heal.
—Mary Baker Eddy, 1908Those who know the joys and miseries of celebrities when they have passed the age of forty know how to defend themselves.
—Sarah Bernhardt, 1904