There was no treachery too base for the world to commit.
—Virginia Woolf, 1927
Archive
Quotes
How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do.
—William James, 1902The atavistic urge toward danger persists and its satisfaction is called adventure.
—John Steinbeck, 1941Attend to earth,
for it is to earth that kings are truly wedded.
Gossip isn’t scandal and it’s not merely malicious. It’s chatter about the human race by lovers of the same.
—Phyllis McGinley, 1957Our crime against criminals is that we treat them as villains.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1898Happiness does not dwell in herds, nor yet in gold.
—Democritus, c. 420 BCTime, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it, cannot be trusted to move at any recognized pace. Usually it loiters, but just when one has come to count upon its slowness, it may suddenly break into a wild irrational gallop.
—Edith Wharton, 1905There lurks in every human heart a desire of distinction which inclines every man first to hope and then to believe that nature has given him something peculiar to himself.
—Samuel Johnson, 1763We get a deal o’ useless things about us, only because we’ve got the money to spend.
—George Eliot, 1860Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.
—Book of Proverbs, c. 150 BCThere is a city in which you find everything you desire—handsome people, pleasures, ornaments of every kind—all that the natural person craves. However, you cannot find a single wise person there.
—Rumi, c. 1250Those from whom we were born have long since departed, and those with whom we grew up exist only in memory. We, too, through the approach of death, become, as it were, trees growing on the sandy bank of a river.
—Bhartrihari, c. 400