All God’s children are not beautiful. Most of God’s children are, in fact, barely presentable.
—Fran Lebowitz, 1978
Archive
Quotes
I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!
—George H. W. Bush, 1990Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea? How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.
—Sydney Smith, 1855It is very foolish to attack one’s enemy openly if one can injure him in secret.
—Giambattista Giraldi, 1543Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.
—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688Every thought is, strictly speaking, an afterthought.
—Hannah Arendt, 1978Whenever there is excess, an ax remedies it.
—Sumerian proverbWe wish away whole years, and travel through time as through a country filled with many wild and empty wastes, which we would fain hurry over, that we may arrive at those several little settlements or imaginary points of rest which are dispersed up and down in it.
—Joseph Addison, 1711Time, 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, 1905A brilliant boxing match, quicksilver in its motions, transpiring far more rapidly than the mind can absorb, can have the power that Emily Dickinson attributed to great poetry: you know it’s great when it takes the top of your head off.
—Joyce Carol Oates, 1987Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear.
—William Shakespeare, 1592The march of the human mind is slow.
—Edmund Burke, 1775A garden must be looked into, and dressed as the body.
—George Herbert, 1640