The body is an instrument which only gives off music when it is used as a body.
—Anaïs Nin, 1935Quotes
One who is frivolous all day will never establish a household.
—Ptahhotep, c. 2400 BCGossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco pipes of those who diffuse it; it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.
—George Eliot, 1876Families, I hate you! Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessions of happiness.
—André Gide, 1897Those things are better which are perfected by nature than those which are finished by art.
—Cicero, c. 45 BCThat is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great.
—Willa Cather, 1918That sweet bondage which is freedom’s self.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1813I have sometimes thought that the laws ought not to punish those actions of evil which are committed when the senses are steeped in intoxication.
—Walt Whitman, 1842Good or ill fortune is very little at our disposal.
—David Hume, 1742What a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books; we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.
—Robert Burton, 1621All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.
—Edmund Burke, 1796Life is no way to treat an animal.
—Kurt Vonnegut, 2005Peace is a natural effect of trade.
—Montesquieu, 1748