Lord! I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
—Jonathan Swift, 1738
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Quotes
When the root lives on, the new leaves come back.
—Aeschylus, c. 458 BCAn irreligious man is not one who denies the gods of the majority, but one who applies to the gods the opinions of the majority. For what most men say about the gods are not ideas derived from sensation, but false opinions, according to which the greatest evils come to the wicked, and the greatest blessings come to the good from the gods.
—Epicurus, c. 250 BCEvery memory everyone has ever had will eventually be underwater.
—Anthony Doerr, 2006Just as language no longer has anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connection with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.
—Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903I came upon no wine, / So wonderful as thirst.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1923The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man’s body.
—Francis Bacon, 1605The misfortune of the man of color is having been enslaved. The misfortune and inhumanity of the white man are having killed man somewhere.
—Frantz Fanon, 1952A large city cannot be experientially known; its life is too manifold for any individual to be able to participate in it.
—Aldous Huxley, 1934When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.
—St. Jerome, 395Where it is a duty to worship the sun, it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.
—John Morley, 1872I imagined it was more difficult to die.
—Louis XIV, 1715Iron may break gold, but water remains whole.
—Ge Hong, c. 300