The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which force of habit has made permanent.
—Marcel Proust, 1919
Archive
Quotes
Can you take your country with you on the soles of your shoes?
—Georg Büchner, 1835The path of social advancement is, and must be, strewn with broken friendships.
—H.G. Wells, 1905Is it only the mouth and belly which are injured by hunger and thirst? Men’s minds are also injured by them.
—Mencius, 300 BCI am dying with the help of too many physicians.
—Alexander the Great, c. 323 BCWhat, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.
—Frederick Douglass, 1855Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain there would be no life.
—John Updike, 1989Curses are like young chickens, they always come home to roost.
—Robert Southey, 1809The sea serves the pirate as well as the trader.
—Prudentius, c. 405For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation.
—Charles Baudelaire, c. 1865It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street.
—Mary Lease, c. 1890He that raises a large family, does indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand…a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1786Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of these two has the grander view?
—Victor Hugo, 1862