The self is like an infant: given free rein, it craves to suckle.
—al-Busiri, c. 1250
Archive
Quotes
Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, / And say my glory was I had such friends.
—W.B. Yeats, 1937There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1790As to the sea itself, love it you cannot. Why should you? I will never believe again the sea was ever loved by anyone whose life was married to it. It is the creation of omnipotence, which is not of humankind and understandable, and so the springs of its behavior are hidden.
—H.M. Tomlinson, 1912An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.
—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
—H.L. Mencken, 1921The Church says that the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in the shadow than in the Church.
—Ferdinand Magellan, c. 1510We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us but for ours to amuse them.
—Evelyn Waugh, 1963Everyone else is represented in Washington by a rich and powerful lobby, it seems. But there is no lobby for the people.
—Shirley Chisholm, 1970History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.
—Theodor Adorno, c. 1946Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will—whatever we may think.
—Lawrence Durrell, 1957Real friends offer both hard truths and soft landings.
—Anna Quindlen, 2012God never sent a messenger save with the language of his folk, that he might make the message clear for them.
—The Qur’an, c. 620