What keeps the democracy alive at all but the hatred of excellence, the desire of the base to see no head higher than their own?
—Mary Renault, 1956
Archive
Quotes
The mind is led on, step by step, to defeat its own logic.
—Dai Vernon, 1994There is no work of human hands which time does not wear away and reduce to dust.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 46 BCI said of laughter, “It is mad,” and of pleasure, “What use is it?”
—Book of Ecclesiastes, 225 BCIf I played in New York, they’d name a candy bar after me.
—Reggie Jackson, 1976When the root lives on, the new leaves come back.
—Aeschylus, c. 458 BCMemories are hunting horns
whose noise dies away in the wind.
It is strange indeed that the more we learn about how to build health, the less healthy Americans become.
—Adelle Davis, 1951The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education. School is where you go between when your parents can’t take you and industry can’t take you.
—John Updike, 1963An unjust law is no law at all.
—Saint Augustine, 395I ride rough waters and shall sink with no one to save me.
—Virginia Woolf, 1931Among all nations, through the darkest polytheism glimmer some faint sparks of monotheism.
—Immanuel Kant, 1781It is hard when nature does not respect your intentions, and she never does exactly respect them.
—Wendell Berry, 1985