Archive

Quotes

The history of the land has been written very largely in water.

—John Hodgdon Bradley Jr., 1935

Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together.

—Anaïs Nin, 1939

If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.

—Jonathan Swift, 1706

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

—Dean Acheson, 1970

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.

—Arthur Miller, 1961

Ours is an age which consciously pursues health, and yet only believes in the reality of sickness.

—Susan Sontag, 1963

Time is a veil interposed between God and ourselves, as our eyelid is between our eye and the light.

—François-René de Chateaubriand, c. 1820

A wise woman never yields by appointment. It should always be an unforeseen happiness.

—Stendhal, 1822

What is the city but the people?

—William Shakespeare, 1608

It is better to live unknown to the law.

—Irish proverb

Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.

—Joseph Stalin, 1934

Don’t ever wear artistic jewelry; it wrecks a woman’s reputation.

—Colette, 1944

A miracle entails a degree of irrationality—not because it shocks reason, but because it makes no appeal to it.

—Emmanuel Lévinas, 1952