A true German can’t stand the French, / Yet willingly he drinks their wines.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1832
Archive
Quotes
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
—Oscar Wilde, 1890To know the abyss of the darkness and not to fear it, to entrust oneself to it and whatever may arise from it—what greater gift?
—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1975Is this dying? Is this all? Is this all that I feared when I prayed against a hard death? Oh, I can bear this! I can bear it!
—Cotton Mather, 1728All people have the common desire to be elevated in honor, but all people have something still more elevated in themselves without knowing it.
—Mencius, c. 330 BCGod seems to have left the receiver off the hook, and time is running out.
—Arthur Koestler, 1967The nature of God is a circle, of which the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.
—Empedocles, c. 450 BCIt has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mold, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.
—Edward Gibbon, c. 1790A brilliant boxing match, quicksilver in its motions, transpiring far more rapidly than the mind can absorb, can have the power that Emily Dickinson attributed to great poetry: you know it’s great when it takes the top of your head off.
—Joyce Carol Oates, 1987Good fortune is light as a feather, but nobody knows how to hold it up. Misfortune is heavy as the earth, but nobody knows how to stay out of its way.
—Zhuangzi, c. 300 BCThe best moment of love is when the lover leaves in the taxi.
—Michel Foucault, c. 1982Traveling is the ruin of all happiness! There’s no looking at a building here after seeing Italy.
—Fanny Burney, 1782It is men who make a city, not walls or ships.
—Thucydides, 410 BC