To live exiled from a place you have known intimately is to experience sensory deprivation. A wide-awake coma.
—Gretel Ehrlich, 1994
Archive
Quotes
I find the pain of a little censure, even when it is unfounded, is more acute than the pleasure of much praise.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1789There’s folks ’ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away the water.
—George Eliot, 1859’Tis not a ridiculous devotion to say a prayer before a game at tables?
—Thomas Browne, 1642Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.
—Anacharsis, c. 550 BCExile lacks the grandeur, the majesty, of expatriation.
—Bharati Mukherjee, 1999The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it.
—Laurence Sterne, 1760Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
—Paul Valéry, 1943To gaze upon a drop of water is to behold the nature of all the waters of the universe.
—Huangbo Xiyun, c. 850The earth is beautiful and bright and kindly, but that is not all. The earth is also terrible and dark and cruel.
—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1970In every human breast, God has implanted a principle, which we call love of freedom; it is impatient of oppression and pants for deliverance.
—Phillis Wheatley, 1774One may like the love and despise the lover.
—George Farquhar, 1706Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape.
—Erich Fromm, 1947