Secrets define us, they mark us, they set us apart from all the others. The secrets which we preserve provide a key to who we are, deep down.
—Nuruddin Farah, 1998
Archive
Quotes
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.
—William Hazlitt, 1819When night in her rusty dungeon has imprisoned our eyesight, and that we are shut separately in our chambers from resort, the devil keeps his audit in our sin-guilty consciences.
—Thomas Nashe, 1594Drink today and drown all sorrow; / You shall perhaps not do it tomorrow.
—John Fletcher, 1625The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realize this: that the human has been roughly handled, but that it has advanced.
—Victor Hugo, 1862The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
—Saint Augustine, c. 390It would seem that in history it’s never a tooth for a tooth, but a thousand, a hundred thousand for one.
—Sybille Bedford, 1963The young always have the same problem—how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their elders and copying one another.
—Quentin Crisp, 1968Revolutions are always verbose.
—Leon Trotsky, 1933Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
—Oscar Wilde, 1893Everyone lives by selling something.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1892Your piping-hot lie is the best of lies.
—Plautus, c. 200 BCShamelessness is the shame of being without shame.
—Mencius, c. 290 BC