Archive

Quotes

One form of loneliness is to have a memory and no one to share it with.

—Phyllis Rose, 1991

A change in the weather is sufficient to create the world and oneself anew.

—Marcel Proust, c. 1920

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest.

—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BC

People react to fear, not love—they don’t teach that in Sunday school, but it’s true.

—Richard Nixon, 1975

A dead enemy always smells good.

—Aulus Vitellius, 69

History is a people’s memory, and without a memory man is demoted to the level of the lower animals.

—Malcolm X, 1964

Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.

—William Blake, c. 1790

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases. We go on a journey chiefly to be free of all impediments and of all inconveniences—to leave ourselves behind, much more to get rid of others.

—William Hazlitt, 1822

Water its living strength first shows, / When obstacles its course oppose.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1815

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.

—Elbert Hubbard, 1911

Friendship is not possible between two women, one of whom is very well dressed.

—Laurie Colwin, 1978

In meeting again after a separation, acquaintances ask after our outward life, friends after our inner life.

—Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, 1880

And then, sir, there is this consideration: that if the abuse be enormous, nature will rise up and, claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system.

—Samuel Johnson, 1791