Sick, irritated, and the prey to a thousand discomforts, I go on with my labor like a true workingman, who, with sleeves rolled up, in the sweat of his brow, beats away at his anvil, not caring whether it rains or blows, hails or thunders.
—Gustave Flaubert, 1845
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Quotes
Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own thoughts, unguarded.
—The Dhammapada, c. 400 BCInsurgents are like conquerors: they must go forward; the moment they are stopped, they are lost.
—Duke of Wellington, c. 1819The thirsty earth soaks up the rain, / And drinks, and gapes for drink again.
—Abraham Cowley, 1656Once something becomes discernible, or understandable, we no longer need to repeat it. We can destroy it.
—Robert Wilson, 1991We wish away whole years, and travel through time as through a country filled with many wild and empty wastes, which we would fain hurry over, that we may arrive at those several little settlements or imaginary points of rest which are dispersed up and down in it.
—Joseph Addison, 1711The more men are massed together, the more corrupt they become. Disease and vice are the sure results of overcrowded cities.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762Rejoice, young man, while you are young, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Follow the inclination of your heart and the desire of your eyes, but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment.
—Book of Ecclesiastes, c. 200 BCI imagine that one of the first forms of behavior, like one of the first signals, may be reduced to this: “Keep me warm.”
—Michel Serres, 1982There are some who, if a cat accidentally comes into the room, though they neither see it nor are told of it, will presently be in a sweat and ready to die away.
—Increase Mather, 1684Everyone should know nowadays the unimportance of the photographic in art—that truth, life, or reality is an organic thing which the poetic imagination can represent or suggest, in essence, only through transformation, through changing into other forms than those which were merely present in appearance.
—Tennessee Williams, 1944Man is a tool-using animal. Nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.
—Thomas Carlyle, 1836When a man dies, and his kin are glad of it, they say, “He is better off.”
—Edgar Watson Howe, 1911