Archive

Quotes

I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.

—Susan Sontag, 1977

The belly is the reason why man does not mistake himself for a god.

—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1886

Had Cleopatra’s nose been shorter, the whole face of the world would have changed.

—Blaise Pascal, 1658

Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.

—Joseph Stalin, 1934

There are places one comes home to that one has never been to.

—Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, 1989

Oil! Our secret god, our secret sharer, our magic wand, fulfiller of our every desire, our coconspirator, the sine qua non in all we do!

—Margaret Atwood, 2015

There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy’s life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.

—Mark Twain, 1876

All men naturally hate each other. We have used concupiscence as best we can to make it serve the common good, but this is mere sham and a false image of charity, for essentially it is just hate.

—Blaise Pascal, c. 1655

You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.

—Billie Holiday, 1956

The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

—Miguel de Cervantes, 1615

The chief merit of language is clearness, and we know that nothing detracts so much from this as do unfamiliar terms.

—Galen, c. 175

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.

—E.M. Forster, 1910

Happiness is not something you can catch and lock up in a vault like wealth. Happiness is nothing but everyday living seen through a veil.

—Zora Neale Hurston, 1939