Anyone who’s never watched somebody die is suffering from a pretty bad case of virginity.
—John Osborne, 1956
Archive
Quotes
It is more blessed to give than to receive.
—Acts of the Apostles, c. 80To live for a time close to great minds is the best kind of education.
—John Buchan, 1940War is sweet to those who don’t know it.
—Erasmus, 1508Life’s no resting, but a moving.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, c. 1795To be too conscious is an illness—a real thoroughgoing illness.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1864Methinks the human method of expression by sound of tongue is very elementary and ought to be substituted for some ingenious invention which should be able to give vent to at least six coherent sentences at once.
—Virginia Woolf, 1899Let the French but have England, and they won’t want to conquer it.
—Horace Walpole, 1745Seek not water, only show you are thirsty, / That water may spring up all around you.
—Rumi, c. 1260The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station.
—Hunter S. Thompson, 1971Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all.
—Aristotle, c. 350 BCNatural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.
—Jeremy Bentham, c. 1832And then, sir, there is this consideration: that if the abuse be enormous, nature will rise up and, claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system.
—Samuel Johnson, 1791