A win always seems shallow: it is the loss that is so profound and suggests nasty infinities.
—E.M. Forster, 1919
Archive
Quotes
Many a man who thinks to found a home discovers that he has merely opened a tavern for his friends.
—Norman Douglas, 1917Of my friends, I am the only one I have left.
—Terence, 161 BCThe sole business of a seaman onshore who has to go to sea again is to take as much pleasure as he can.
—Leigh Hunt, 1820A world is sooner destroyed than made.
—Thomas Burnet, 1684Avoid the law—the first loss is generally the least.
—Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee, 1844We don’t have the option of turning away from the future. No one gets to vote on whether technology is going to change our lives.
—Bill Gates, 1995Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made—through disobedience and through rebellion.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891A passion for horses, players, and gladiators seems to be the epidemic folly of the times. The child receives it in his mother’s womb; he brings it with him into the world, and in a mind so possessed, what room for science, or any generous purpose?
—Tacitus, c. 100Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
—B.F. Skinner, 1964A human being must have occupation, if he or she is not to become a nuisance to the world.
—Dorothy L. Sayers, 1947Shamelessness is the shame of being without shame.
—Mencius, c. 290 BCDon’t you find it a beautiful clean thought, a world empty of people, just uninterrupted grass, and a hare sitting up?
—D.H. Lawrence, 1920