Archive

Quotes

As far as I can see, the history of experimental art in the twentieth century is intimately bound up with the experience of intoxification.

—Will Self, 1994

Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.

—C.S. Lewis, 1961

Give me chastity and continence, but not just now.

—Saint Augustine, 397

Spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of birdsong.

—Rachel Carson, 1962

I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.

—Xenocrates, c. 350 BC

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.

—Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1928

No time to marry, no time to settle down, I’m a young woman, and ain’t done runnin’ round.

—Bessie Smith, 1926

He who would be happy should stay at home.

—Greek proverb

The happy ending is our national belief.

—Mary McCarthy, 1947

Those who are awake have a world that is one and common, but each of those who are asleep turns aside into his own particular world.

—Heraclitus, c. 500 BC

Let the French but have England, and they won’t want to conquer it.

—Horace Walpole, 1745

The oldest voice in the world is the wind.

—Donald Culross Peattie, 1950

Despotism subjects a nation to one tyrant, democracy to many.

—Marguerite Gardiner, 1839