Archive

Quotes

Some of us would be greatly astonished to learn the reasons why others respect us.

—Marquis de Vauvenargues, 1746

Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

Years are nothing to me—they should be nothing to you. Who asked you to count them or to consider them? In the world of wild nature, time is measured by seasons only—the bird does not know how old it is—the rose tree does not count its birthdays!

—Marie Corelli, 1911

That is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great.

—Willa Cather, 1918

Gossip isn’t scandal and it’s not merely malicious. It’s chatter about the human race by lovers of the same.

—Phyllis McGinley, 1957

There is no work of human hands which time does not wear away and reduce to dust.

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 46 BC

Give me chastity and continence, but not just now.

—Saint Augustine, 397

And to our age’s drowsy blood / Still shouts the inspiring sea.

—James Russell Lowell, 1848

It was funny how I could feel all alone and under surveillance at the same time.

—Cory Doctorow, 2013

I would delight in music, but the music is discordant.

—Xie Lingyun, c. 425

It is the little causes, long continued, which are considered as bringing about the greatest changes of the earth.

—James Hutton, 1795

Fear has a smell, as love does.

—Margaret Atwood, 1972

We do not suffer by accident. 

—Jane Austen, 1813