Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.
—William Morris, 1882
Archive
Quotes
You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers.
—Walter Lippmann, 1913If you steal, do not steal too much at a time. You may be arrested. Steal cleverly, little by little.
—Mobutu Sese Seko, 1991Like a broken gong be still, be silent. Know the stillness of freedom where there is no more striving.
—Siddhartha Gautama, c. 500 BCBe temperate in wine, in eating, girls, and sloth, or the Gout will seize you.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1734The first thing that a new migrant sends to his family back home isn’t money; it’s a story.
—Suketu Mehta, 2019Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.
If the present be compared with the remote past, it is easily seen that in all cities and in all peoples there are the same desires and the same passions as there always were.
—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1513We are to go to law never to revenge, but only to repair.
—Samuel Pepys, 1661No time to marry, no time to settle down, I’m a young woman, and ain’t done runnin’ round.
—Bessie Smith, 1926One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can’t eat eight hours a day, nor drink for eight hours a day, nor make love for eight hours.
—William Faulkner, 1958Talk 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, 1961O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes.
—William Shakespeare, c. 1599