Archive

Quotes

I always think of nature as a great spectacle, somewhat resembling the opera.

—Bernard de Fontenelle, 1686

We die of comfort and by conflict live.

—May Sarton, 1953

Those who travel heedlessly from place to place, observing only their distance from each other and attending only to their accommodation at the inn at night, set out fools, and will certainly return so.

—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 1747

Music today is nothing more than the art of performing difficult pieces.

—Voltaire, 1759

Nature never breaks her own laws.

—Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1500

Yes to a market economy, no to a market society.

—Lionel Jospin, 1998

There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. As well speak of a female liver.

—Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1898

A bad reputation is easy to come by, painful to bear, and difficult to clear.

—Hesiod, c. 700 BC

If there is a word in the dictionary under any letter from A to Z that I abominate, it is energy.

—Charles Dickens, 1865

Hospitality consists in a little fire, a little food, and an immense quiet.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1856

The world began without man, and it will end without him.

—Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1955

Life isn’t all beer and skittles, but beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form a good part of every Englishman’s education.

—Thomas Hughes, 1857

I have often said that if I wish to name-drop, I have only to list my ex-friends.

—Norman Podhoretz, 1999