It is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear.
—Charlotte Brontë, 1847
Archive
Quotes
I am a man: I consider nothing human alien to me.
—Terence, 163 BCI never know quite when I’m not writing. Sometimes my wife comes up to me at a party and says, Dammit, Thurber, stop writing. She usually catches me in the middle of a paragraph. Or my daughter will look up from the dinner table and ask, Is he sick? No, my wife says, he’s writing something.
—James Thurber, 1955It is noble to die before doing anything that deserves death.
—Anaxandrides, c. 376Hoping for new friendship from old enemies is / Like expecting to find a rose in a furnace.
—Muhammad Baqir Najm-i Sani, 1612If a king loves music, there is little wrong in the land.
—Mencius, c. 330 BCFor, say they, when cruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.
—Herman Melville, 1851The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education. School is where you go between when your parents can’t take you and industry can’t take you.
—John Updike, 1963I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.
—Margaret Atwood, 1976The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes “sightseeing.”
—Daniel Boorstin, 1961There 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, 1684In all the ancient states and empires, those who had the shipping, had the wealth.
—William Petty, 1690Death from the bubonic plague is rated, with crucifixion, among the nastiest human experiences of all.
—Guy R. Williams, 1975