Archive

Quotes

Man’s great mission is not to conquer nature by main force but to cooperate with her intelligently but lovingly for his own purposes.

—Lewis Mumford, 1962

I’ve been on more laps than a napkin.

—Mae West

They say, “We only have the life of this world. We die and we live, and nothing destroys us but time.” Yet, not true knowledge have they of this—only belief.

—The Qur’an, c. 620

My father! The sun is my father, and the earth is my mother, and on her bosom I will recline.

—Tecumseh, 1810

I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts.

—Herman Melville, 1853

Let the French but have England, and they won’t want to conquer it.

—Horace Walpole, 1745

If my books had been any worse I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better I should not have come.

—Raymond Chandler, 1945

Friendship was given by nature to be an assistant to virtue, not a companion to vice.

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, c. 45 BC

Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

—George Orwell, 1944

Do not ask me to be kind; just ask me to act as though I were.

—Jules Renard, 1898

Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.

—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688

The best way to fill time is to waste it.

—Marguerite Duras, 1987

Every man must descend into the flesh to meet mankind.

—G.K. Chesterton, 1910