Archive

Quotes

Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but most important, it finds homes for us everywhere.

—Hazel Rochman, 1995

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

—Anthony Burgess, 1972

I shall curse you with book and bell and candle.

—Thomas Malory, c. 1470

Life is the art of being well deceived.

—William Hazlitt, c. 1817

A world is sooner destroyed than made.

—Thomas Burnet, 1684

Those from whom we were born have long since departed, and those with whom we grew up exist only in memory. We, too, through the approach of death, become, as it were, trees growing on the sandy bank of a river.

—Bhartrihari, c. 400

What reason weaves, by passion is undone.

—Alexander Pope, 1972

In the past, men created witches; now they create mental patients.

—Thomas Szasz, 1970

A cruel story runs on wheels, and every hand oils the wheels as they run.

—Ouida, 1880

Just as language no longer has anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connection with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.

—Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me.

—Martin Luther King Jr., 1962

And then, sir, there is this consideration: that if the abuse be enormous, nature will rise up and, claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system.

—Samuel Johnson, 1791

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.

—Toni Morrison, 1987