We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things, and once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who would endeavor to erase them.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774
Archive
Quotes
A true German can’t stand the French, / Yet willingly he drinks their wines.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1832There is no crime without precedent.
—Seneca the Younger, c. 60Your piping-hot lie is the best of lies.
—Plautus, c. 200 BCEvery house: temple, empire, school.
—Joseph Joubert, 1800Every thought is, strictly speaking, an afterthought.
—Hannah Arendt, 1978The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.
—Donald Barthelme, 1964I’ve got some shit I’m conservative about and some shit I’m liberal about. Crime—I’m conservative. Prostitution—I’m liberal.
—Chris Rock, 2008What is the hardest task in the world? To think.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841The wonderful sea charmed me from the first.
—Joshua Slocum, 1900Reality is always the foe of famous names.
—Petrarch, 1337’Tis the sport to have the engineer / Hoist with his own petard.
—William Shakespeare, c. 1600It would seem that in history it’s never a tooth for a tooth, but a thousand, a hundred thousand for one.
—Sybille Bedford, 1963