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
Archive
Quotes
Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don’t know.
—Albert Camus, 1942Every man has a lurking wish to appear considerable in his native place.
—Samuel Johnson, 1771A sick child is always the mother’s property; her own feelings generally make it so.
—Jane Austen, 1816Once something becomes discernible, or understandable, we no longer need to repeat it. We can destroy it.
—Robert Wilson, 1991There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.
—Anthony Trollope, 1862The 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, 1902War is fear cloaked in courage.
—William Westmoreland, 1966The true mission of American sports is to prepare young men for war.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower, c. 1952Can we not live without pleasure, who cannot but with pleasure die?
—Tertullian, c. 215Jokes are grievances.
—Marshall McLuhan, 1969A false report rides post.
—English proverbTo 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