Archive

Quotes

Don’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

There is only one antidote to mental suffering and that is physical pain.

—Karl Marx, 1860

Even members of the nobility, let alone persons of no consequence, would do well not to have children. 

—Yoshida Kenko, c. 1330

Once any group in society stands in a relatively deprived position in relation to other groups, it is genuinely deprived.

—Margaret Mead, 1972

A traveler’s chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad—as well as good—example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.

—Jonathan Swift, 1726

Jokes are grievances.

—Marshall McLuhan, 1969

The more religious a country is, the more crimes are committed in it.

—Napoleon Bonaparte, 1817

There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness.

—H.L. Mencken, 1920

If I had the use of my body I would throw it out of the window.

—Samuel Beckett, 1951

The pleasure we hold in esteem for the course of our lives ought to have a greater share of our time dedicated to it; we should refuse no occasion nor omit any opportunity of drinking, and always have it in our minds.

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580

A great step toward independence is a good-humored stomach, one that is willing to endure rough treatment.

—Seneca the Younger, c. 60

You may drive out nature with a pitchfork, yet she’ll be constantly running back.

—Horace, 20 BC

Art transcends its limitations only by staying within them.

—Flannery O’Connor, 1964