The elephant, although a gross beast, is yet the most decent and most sensible of any other upon earth. Although he never changes his female, and hath so tender a love for her whom he hath chosen, yet he never couples with her but at the end of every three years, and then only for the space of five days.
—St. Francis de Sales, 1609
Archive
Quotes
Journalists belong in the gutter, because that is where the ruling classes throw their guilty secrets.
—Gerald Priestland, 1988I am a man: I consider nothing human alien to me.
—Terence, 163 BCSex is the last refuge of the miserable.
—Quentin Crisp, 1968Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.
—Shimon Peres, 1995There is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943The first thing that a new migrant sends to his family back home isn’t money; it’s a story.
—Suketu Mehta, 2019A great step toward independence is a good-humored stomach, one that is willing to endure rough treatment.
—Seneca the Younger, c. 60Those who cross the seas change their climate but not their character.
—Roman proverbMemories are like corks left out of bottles. They swell. They no longer fit.
—Harriet Doerr, 1978It was lonesome, the leaving.
—Wetatonmi, c. 1877Men have written in the most convincing manner to prove that death is no evil, and this opinion has been confirmed on a thousand celebrated occasions by the weakest of men as well as by heroes. Even so I doubt whether any sensible person has ever believed it, and the trouble men take to convince others as well as themselves that they do shows clearly that it is no easy undertaking.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1665For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1879