If the bird does like its cage, and does like its sugar, and will not leave it, why keep the door so very carefully shut?
—Olive Schreiner, 1883
Archive
Quotes
Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of these two has the grander view?
—Victor Hugo, 1862Often an entire city has suffered because of an evil man.
—Hesiod, c. 700 BCI proclaim night more truthful than the day.
—Léopold Sédar Senghor, 1956Religion! How it dominates man’s mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion. But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began.
—Emma Goldman, 1910A win always seems shallow: it is the loss that is so profound and suggests nasty infinities.
—E.M. Forster, 1919Journalists belong in the gutter, because that is where the ruling classes throw their guilty secrets.
—Gerald Priestland, 1988The life of spies is to know, not be known.
—George Herbert, c. 1621If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation.
—William Hazlitt, 1823Music is our myth of the inner life.
—Susanne K. Langer, 1942Those who believe in freedom of the will have never loved and never hated.
—Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, 1893The future...something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
—C.S. Lewis, 1941I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king.
—Elizabeth I, 1588