A whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
—Herman Melville, 1851
Archive
Quotes
Fame is no sanctuary from the passing of youth. Suicide is much easier and more acceptable in Hollywood than growing old gracefully.
—Julie Burchill, 1986The beginning of health lies in knowing the disease.
—Miguel de Cervantes, 1615There are many civil questions that arise between individuals in which it is not so important the controversy be settled one way or another as that it be settled.
—William Howard Taft, 1921Whole nations have melted away like balls of snow before the sun.
—Dragging Canoe, 1775Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny, they have only shifted it to another shoulder.
—George Bernard Shaw, 1903The older one grows, the more one likes indecency.
—Virginia Woolf, 1921Worldly fame is but a breath of wind that blows now this way, now that, and changes names as it changes in direction.
—Dante Alighieri, c. 1315The root of the kingdom is in the State. The root of the State is in the family. The root of the family is in the person of its Head.
—Mencius, c. 270 BCThousands have lived without love, not one without water.
—W.H. Auden, 1957I'm all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.
—Gore Vidal, 1973Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be breakthrough.
—R.D. Laing, 1967New things are always ugly.
—Willa Cather, 1921