Revolutionaries are greater sticklers for formality than conservatives.
—Italo Calvino, 1957
Archive
Quotes
Ours is an age which consciously pursues health, and yet only believes in the reality of sickness.
—Susan Sontag, 1963Conservation is not merely a thing to be enshrined in outdoor museums, but a way of living on land.
—Aldo Leopold, 1933The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.
—Vladimir Nabokov, 1941I’ve dreamed enough to have a drink.
—François Rabelais, 1546The nature of God is a circle, of which the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.
—Empedocles, c. 450 BCTowns oftener swamp one than carry one out onto the big ocean of life.
—D.H. Lawrence, 1908Insurgents are like conquerors: they must go forward; the moment they are stopped, they are lost.
—Duke of Wellington, c. 1819Attend to earth,
for it is to earth that kings are truly wedded.
Good men must not obey the laws too well.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.
—Edward O. Wilson, 2009We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things, and once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who would endeavor to erase them.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774After each night we are emptier: our mysteries and our griefs have leaked away into our dreams.
—E.M. Cioran, 1949