Archive

Quotes

Time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it, cannot be trusted to move at any recognized pace. Usually it loiters, but just when one has come to count upon its slowness, it may suddenly break into a wild irrational gallop.

—Edith Wharton, 1905

Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don’t know. 

—Albert Camus, 1942

Every man has a lurking wish to appear considerable in his native place.

—Samuel Johnson, 1771

A sick child is always the mother’s property; her own feelings generally make it so.

—Jane Austen, 1816

Once something becomes discernible, or understandable, we no longer need to repeat it. We can destroy it.

—Robert Wilson, 1991

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

—Anthony Trollope, 1862

The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry to equanimity, receptivity, and peace is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of personal center of energy.

—William James, 1902

War is fear cloaked in courage. 

—William Westmoreland, 1966

The true mission of American sports is to prepare young men for war.

—Dwight D. Eisenhower, c. 1952

Can we not live without pleasure, who cannot but with pleasure die?

—Tertullian, c. 215

Jokes are grievances.

—Marshall McLuhan, 1969

A false report rides post.

—English proverb

To know the abyss of the darkness and not to fear it, to entrust oneself to it and whatever may arise from it—what greater gift?

—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1975