Anyone who has a child should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he’ll escape.
—W.H. Auden, 1947
Archive
Quotes
Whoever expects to walk peacefully in the world must be money’s guest.
—Norman O. Brown, 1959Pride and excess bring disaster for man.
—Xunzi, 250 BCI never know quite when I’m not writing. Sometimes my wife comes up to me at a party and says, Dammit, Thurber, stop writing. She usually catches me in the middle of a paragraph. Or my daughter will look up from the dinner table and ask, Is he sick? No, my wife says, he’s writing something.
—James Thurber, 1955Music today is nothing more than the art of performing difficult pieces.
—Voltaire, 1759The sleep of reason produces monsters.
—Francisco Goya, 1799Someone will remember us
I say
even in another time.
O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes.
—William Shakespeare, c. 1599Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.
—Erica Jong, 1973Envy is the basis of democracy.
—Bertrand Russell, 1930Revolutions are not about trifles, but they are produced by trifles.
—Aristotle, c. 350 BCCan you take your country with you on the soles of your shoes?
—Georg Büchner, 1835Nature is immovable.
—Euripides, c. 415 BC