Diseases, at least many of them, are like human beings. They are born, they flourish, and they die.
—David Riesman, 1937
Archive
Quotes
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
Laws, like houses, lean on one another.
—Edmund Burke, 1765The wonderful sea charmed me from the first.
—Joshua Slocum, 1900I do not amuse myself by thinking of dead people.
—Napoleon Bonaparte, 1807Wit enables us to act rudely with impunity.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1678Traveling is like flirting with life. It’s like saying, “I would stay here and love you, but I have to go; this is my station.”
—Lisa St. Aubin de Terán, 1989We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words.
—Anna Sewell, 1877Conservation is not merely a thing to be enshrined in outdoor museums, but a way of living on land.
—Aldo Leopold, 1933There is a city in which you find everything you desire—handsome people, pleasures, ornaments of every kind—all that the natural person craves. However, you cannot find a single wise person there.
—Rumi, c. 1250Carnal embrace is the practice of throwing one’s arms around a side of beef.
—Tom Stoppard, 1993If you read somebody’s diary, you get what you deserve.
—David Sedaris, 2004It would be impossible to live for a year without disaster unless one practiced character-reading.
—Virginia Woolf, 1924