As bad a dresser as I am, anything beats being judged by my character.
—David Sedaris, 1997
Archive
Quotes
Can we not live without pleasure, who cannot but with pleasure die?
—Tertullian, c. 215Conjecturing a Climate
Of unsuspended Suns –
Adds poignancy to Winter
To live exiled from a place you have known intimately is to experience sensory deprivation. A wide-awake coma.
—Gretel Ehrlich, 1994Nothing puzzles me more than time and space, and yet nothing puzzles me less, for I never think about them.
—Charles Lamb, 1810Drugs, cataplasms, and whiskey are stupid substitutes for the dignity and potency of divine mind and its efficacy to heal.
—Mary Baker Eddy, 1908I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do—that was one of my favorite things about it—and when I first did it, I felt perverse.
—Diane Arbus, c. 1950I began revolution with eighty-two men. If I had to do it again, I do it with ten or fifteen and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action.
—Fidel Castro, 1959
Language is the archives of history.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844The nature of God is a circle, of which the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.
—Empedocles, c. 450 BCThe merchant always has fresh losses to expect, and the dread of base poverty forbids his rest.
—Decimus Magnus Ausonius, c. 390All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The violence of revolutions is the violence of men who charge into a vacuum.
—John Kenneth Galbraith, 1977To hide and feel guilty would be the beginning of defeat.
—Milan Kundera, 1978