Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
—Oscar Wilde, 1893
Archive
Quotes
To need to dominate others is to need others. The commander is dependent.
—Fernando Pessoa, c. 1935We all have a contract with the public—in us they see themselves, or what they would like to be.
—Clark Gable, 1935I think it makes small difference to the dead if they are buried in the tokens of luxury. All this is an empty glorification left for those who live.
—Euripides, 415 BCThe bathing was so delightful this morning, and Molly so pressing with me to enjoy myself, that I believe I stayed in rather too long, as since the middle of the day I have felt unreasonably tired. I shall be more careful another time, and shall not bathe tomorrow as I had before intended.
—Jane Austen, 1804Oil dependency is not just an economic attachment but appears as a kind of cognitive compulsion.
—Peter Hitchcock, 2010Friend! It is a common word, often lightly used. Like other good and beautiful things, it may be tarnished by careless handling.
—Harriet Jacobs, 1861How like to us is that filthy beast the ape.
—Cicero, 45 BCTo place oneself in the position of God is painful: being God is equivalent to being tortured. For being God means that one is in harmony with all that is, including the worst. The existence of the worst evils is unimaginable unless God willed them.
—Georges Bataille, 1957’Tis the destroyer, or the devil, that scatters plagues about the world.
—Cotton Mather, 1693The land is full of bloody crimes, and the city is full of violence.
—The BibleBetter free in a strange land than a slave at home.
—German proverbThe dead are often just as living to us as the living are, only we cannot get them to believe it. They can come to us, but till we die we cannot go to them. To be dead is to be unable to understand that one is alive.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1888