What is the city but the people?
—William Shakespeare, 1608
Archive
Quotes
The traveler with nothing on him sings in the robber’s face.
—Juvenal, c. 125Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need—a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.
—Jerome K. Jerome, 1889Nature resolves everything into its component elements, but annihilates nothing.
—Lucretius, c. 57 BCBefore the earth could become an industrial garbage can, it had first to become a research laboratory.
—Theodore Roszak, 1972It is hard when nature does not respect your intentions, and she never does exactly respect them.
—Wendell Berry, 1985The mere existence of nuclear weapons by the thousands is an incontrovertible sign of human insanity.
—Isaac Asimov, 1988People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence, and they think they have seen something.
—Søren Kierkegaard, 1843I’ve seen the future, brother; it is murder.
—Leonard Cohen, 1992I can’t see (or feel) the conflict between love and religion. To me they’re the same thing.
—Elizabeth Bowen, c. 1970I do desire we may be better strangers.
—William Shakespeare, 1600Conjecturing a Climate
Of unsuspended Suns –
Adds poignancy to Winter
Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.
—Denis Diderot, 1774