Fate leads the willing and drags along those who hang back.
—Cleanthes, c. 250 BCQuotes
The young always have the same problem—how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their elders and copying one another.
—Quentin Crisp, 1968Friendship itself will not stand the strain of very much good advice for very long.
—Robert Wilson Lynd, 1924If I played in New York, they’d name a candy bar after me.
—Reggie Jackson, 1976I won’t be happy till I’m as famous as God.
—Madonna, c. 1985Anyone who has a child should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he’ll escape.
—W.H. Auden, 1947Recreations should be as sauces to your meat, to sharpen your appetite unto the duties of your calling, and not to glut yourselves with them.
—Thomas Gouge, 1672I’ve been on more laps than a napkin.
—Mae WestThe moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to.
—Carl Sandburg, 1934We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us but for ours to amuse them.
—Evelyn Waugh, 1963Religion! How it dominates man’s mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion. But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began.
—Emma Goldman, 1910Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom.
—Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1480Too often, where we need water we find guns.
—Ban Ki-moon, 2008