We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament and embrace it with passion if we want to be happy.
—Cyril Connolly, 1944
Archive
Quotes
What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.
—Frederick Douglass, 1855Everyone else is represented in Washington by a rich and powerful lobby, it seems. But there is no lobby for the people.
—Shirley Chisholm, 1970One of the animals which a generous and sociable man would soonest become is a dog. A dog can have a friend; he has affections and character; he can enjoy equally the field and the fireside; he dreams, he caresses, he propitiates; he offends and is pardoned; he stands by you in adversity; he is a good fellow.
—Leigh Hunt, 1834Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.
—E.B. White, 1944Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.
—Benjamin Franklin, c. 1732There is a demon who puts wings on certain tales and launches them like eagles out into space.
—Alexandre Dumas, 1846Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
—E.B. White, 1944Nature never breaks her own laws.
—Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1500I order that my funeral ceremonies be extremely modest, and that they take place at dawn or at the evening Ave Maria, without song or music.
—Giuseppe Verdi, 1900The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy, and temperamental: it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chawing a hunk of melon in the dust.
—Elizabeth Bowen, 1955It is wretched business to be digging a well just as you’re dying of thirst.
—Plautus, c. 193 BCThe highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.
—Charles Darwin, 1871