Never greet a stranger in the night, for he may be a demon.
—Babylonian Talmud, c. 600
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Quotes
If I had been born a man, I would have conquered Europe. As I was born a woman, I exhausted my energy in tirades against fate and in eccentricities.
—Marie Bashkirtseff, 1884Even diseases have lost their prestige, there aren’t so many of them left.
—Louis-Ferdinand Céline, 1960To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the need for thought.
—Henri Poincaré, 1903It is hell to belong to a suppressed minority.
—Claude McKay, 1937Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain there would be no life.
—John Updike, 1989I began revolution with eighty-two men. If I had to do it again, I do it with ten or fifteen and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action.
—Fidel Castro, 1959
Nature contains no one constant form.
—Paul-Henri Dietrich d’Holbach, 1770Every adolescent has that dream every century has that dream every revolutionary has that dream, to destroy the family.
—Gertrude Stein, 1940The art of invention grows young with the things invented.
—Francis Bacon, 1605I mean, why on earth (outside sickness and hangovers) aren’t people continually drunk? I want ecstasy of the mind all the time.
—Jack Kerouac, 1957He who dies of epidemic disease is a martyr.
—Muhammad, c. 630I have sometimes thought that the laws ought not to punish those actions of evil which are committed when the senses are steeped in intoxication.
—Walt Whitman, 1842