The brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body.
—Arthur Schopenhauer, 1851
Archive
Quotes
Doing research on the web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly.
—Roger Ebert, 1998Suffering has its limit, but fears are endless.
—Pliny the Younger, c. 108We are able to find everything in our memory, which is like a dispensary or chemical laboratory in which chance steers our hand sometimes to a soothing drug and sometimes to a dangerous poison.
—Marcel Proust, c. 1922Memories are hunting horns
whose noise dies away in the wind.
Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.
—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688The most socially subversive institution of our time is the one-parent family.
—Paul Johnson, 1989Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you, because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.
—Roald Dahl, 1990I proclaim night more truthful than the day.
—Léopold Sédar Senghor, 1956Grown up, and that is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to skip it and go from one childhood to another.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, c. 1940I think heaven will not be as good as earth, unless it bring with it that sweet power to remember, which is the staple of heaven here.
—Emily Dickinson, 1879What timid man does not avoid contact with the sick, fearing lest he contract a disease so near?
—Ovid, c. 10Such then is the human state, that to wish greatness for one’s country is to wish harm to one’s neighbors.
—Voltaire, 1764