Whenever in history equality appeared on the agenda, it was exported somewhere else, like an undesirable.
—Mary McCarthy, 1971
Archive
Quotes
The appointed thing comes at the appointed time in the appointed way.
—Myrtle Reed, 1910Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.
—Albert Camus, c. 1940Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
—W.H. Auden, 1957In the name of Hippocrates doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.
—Luis Buñuel, 1983Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.
—Iris Murdoch, 1974It is wretched business to be digging a well just as you’re dying of thirst.
—Plautus, c. 193 BCHe who laugheth too much, hath the nature of a fool; he that laugheth not at all, hath the nature of an old cat.
—Thomas Fuller, 1732No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.
—Magna Carta, 1215The elephant, although a gross beast, is yet the most decent and most sensible of any other upon earth. Although he never changes his female, and hath so tender a love for her whom he hath chosen, yet he never couples with her but at the end of every three years, and then only for the space of five days.
—St. Francis de Sales, 1609Oil! Our secret god, our secret sharer, our magic wand, fulfiller of our every desire, our coconspirator, the sine qua non in all we do!
—Margaret Atwood, 2015The world is for thousands a freak show; the images flicker past and vanish.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1776Money is mourned with deeper sorrow than friends or kindred.
—Juvenal, 128