I’ve been bathing in the poem / Of star-infused and milky sea / Devouring the azure greens.
—Arthur Rimbaud, 1871
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Quotes
Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.
—Agnes Repplier, 1916Just to fill the hour—that is happiness.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844I cannot live without books, but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1815You can put wings on a pig, but you don’t make it an eagle.
—Bill Clinton, 1996God sells us all things at the price of labor.
—Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1500Inventor, n. A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers, and springs and believes it civilization.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1911I am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young. That’s what sitting on your ass does to your face.
—Leonard Cohen, 1970The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy, and temperamental: it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chawing a hunk of melon in the dust.
—Elizabeth Bowen, 1955There is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943Happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous.
—Pericles, c. 431 BCI would delight in music, but the music is discordant.
—Xie Lingyun, c. 425What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.
—Erasmus, 1515