Anyone who doesn’t know foreign languages knows nothing of his own.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1821
Archive
Quotes
I have often said that if I wish to name-drop, I have only to list my ex-friends.
—Norman Podhoretz, 1999Nature is the art of God.
—Thomas Browne, 1635Much money makes a country poor, for it sets a dearer price on every thing.
—George Herbert, 1640All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.
—Toni Morrison, 1987‘Tis a superstition to insist on a special diet. All is made at last of the same chemical atoms.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860As far as I can see, the history of experimental art in the twentieth century is intimately bound up with the experience of intoxification.
—Will Self, 1994I know what I have given you. I do not know what you have received.
—Antonio Porchia, 1943The period is not very remote when the benefits of a liberal and free commerce will, pretty generally, succeed to the devastations and horrors of war.
—George Washington, 1786I’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, 2008A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.
—Arthur Miller, 1961For, say they, when cruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.
—Herman Melville, 1851The day unravels what the night has woven.
—Walter Benjamin, 1929