I went [to war] because I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want the glory or the pay; I wanted the right thing done.
—Louisa May Alcott, 1863
Archive
Quotes
Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term art, I should call it “the reproduction of what the senses perceive in nature through the veil of the soul.” The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of “artist.”
—Edgar Allan Poe, 1849The world is made of the very stuff of the body.
—Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 1961To ensure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough; a police force is needed as well.
—Albert Camus, 1951The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletariat to the level of bourgeois stupidity.
—Gustave Flaubert, 1871Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.
—Zora Neale Hurston, 1942Humiliation is the beginning of sanctification.
—John Donne, c. 1629Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.
—E.B. White, 1944A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.
—Amiri Baraka, 1962A person who sees only fashion in fashion is a fool.
—Honoré de Balzac, 1830The decline of the aperitif may well be one of the most depressing phenomena of our time.
—Luis Buñuel, 1983I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.
—John Maynard Keynes, 1917Happiness is not something you can catch and lock up in a vault like wealth. Happiness is nothing but everyday living seen through a veil.
—Zora Neale Hurston, 1939