I take it as a prime cause of the present confusion of society that it is too sickly and too doubtful to use pleasure frankly as a test of value.
—Rebecca West, 1939
Archive
Quotes
A god cannot procure death for himself, even if he wished it, which, so numerous are the evils of life, has been granted to man as our chief good.
—Pliny the Elder, c. 77Friends are ourselves.
—John Donne, 1603A merchant shall hardly keep himself from doing wrong.
—Ecclesiasticus, c. 180 BCThe noblest kind of retribution is not to become like your enemy.
—Marcus Aurelius, c. 175There’s plenty of water in the universe without life, but nowhere is there life without water.
—Sylvia Alice Earle, 1995The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.
—Basho, c. 1690I’m afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.
—Aldous Huxley, 1925The more sifted, the finer the flour; the more often repeated, the rougher the gossip.
—Korean proverbReading is learning, but applying is also learning and the more important kind of learning at that.
—Mao Zedong, 1936Insurgents are like conquerors: they must go forward; the moment they are stopped, they are lost.
—Duke of Wellington, c. 1819Diseases are not immutable entities but dynamic social constructions that have biographies of their own.
—Robert P. Hudson, 1983Those who know the joys and miseries of celebrities when they have passed the age of forty know how to defend themselves.
—Sarah Bernhardt, 1904