Football causeth fighting, brawling, contention, quarrel picking, murder, homicide and great effusion of bloode, as daily experience teacheth.
—Philip Stubbes, 1583Quotes
Sex: in America, an obsession; in other parts of the world, a fact.
—Marlene Dietrich, 1962I don’t believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there’s one thing that’s dangerous for an artist, it’s precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it.
—Federico Fellini, c. 1950Anyone who doesn’t know foreign languages knows nothing of his own.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1821All God’s children are not beautiful. Most of God’s children are, in fact, barely presentable.
—Fran Lebowitz, 1978Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1665Of troubles none is greater than to be robbed of one’s native land.
—Euripides, 431 BCThe bathing was so delightful this morning, and Molly so pressing with me to enjoy myself, that I believe I stayed in rather too long, as since the middle of the day I have felt unreasonably tired. I shall be more careful another time, and shall not bathe tomorrow as I had before intended.
—Jane Austen, 1804The body says what words cannot.
—Martha Graham, 1985Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
—E.B. White, 1944Machines do not run in order to enable men to live, but we resign ourselves to feeding men in order that they may serve the machines.
—Simone Weil, 1934Imitate the ass in his love to his master.
—St. John Chrysostom, c. 388Alongside all swindlers the state now stands there as swindler-in-chief.
—Jacob Burckhardt, c. 1875