Archive

Quotes

There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.

—Sylvia Plath, 1963

Exile lacks the grandeur, the majesty, of expatriation.

—Bharati Mukherjee, 1999

I have been a stranger here in my own land all my life.

—Sophocles, c. 441 BC

Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

—Henry Kissinger, 1972

The doctor occupies a seat in the front row of the stalls of the human drama, and is constantly watching and even intervening in the tragedies, comedies, and tragicomedies which form the raw material of the literary art.

—W. Russell Brain, 1952

God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the cat. He has no real style. He just goes on trying other things.

—Pablo Picasso, 1964

We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.

—Oscar Wilde, 1887

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.

—William Hazlitt, 1819

Appearances often are deceiving.

—Aesop, c. 550 BC

A large city cannot be experientially known; its life is too manifold for any individual to be able to participate in it.

—Aldous Huxley, 1934

Despotism subjects a nation to one tyrant—­democracy to many.

—Marguerite Gardiner, 1839

The winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.

—Edward Gibbon, 1788

Can you draw sweet water from a foul well?

—Brooks Atkinson, 1940