I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1928
Archive
Quotes
To gaze upon a drop of water is to behold the nature of all the waters of the universe.
—Huangbo Xiyun, c. 850Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear.
—William Shakespeare, 1592The sole business of a seaman onshore who has to go to sea again is to take as much pleasure as he can.
—Leigh Hunt, 1820I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.
—Xenocrates, c. 350 BCGood men must not obey the laws too well.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844Doctors don’t know everything really. They understand matter, not spirit. And you and I live in spirit.
—William Saroyan, 1943A first-class man subsists on the matter he destroys.
—Saul Bellow, 1989Sick, irritated, and the prey to a thousand discomforts, I go on with my labor like a true workingman, who, with sleeves rolled up, in the sweat of his brow, beats away at his anvil, not caring whether it rains or blows, hails or thunders.
—Gustave Flaubert, 1845Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 63 BCExtraordinary how potent cheap music is.
—Noël Coward, 1930The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They indeed are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them.
—Alexis de Tocqueville, 1840It hurts to watch the fluency of a body acclimated to its shackling.
—Leslie Jamison, 2014