Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.
—Lucretius, c. 58 BC
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Quotes
Inventor, n. A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers, and springs and believes it civilization.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1911Hospitality consists in a little fire, a little food, and an immense quiet.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1856I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.
—Albert Camus, 1957Other nations use “force”; we Britons alone use “might.”
—Evelyn Waugh, 1938Sport is the bloom and glow of a perfect health.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1838Among famous traitors of history, one might mention the weather.
—Ilka Chase, 1969Nothing is more narrow-minded than chauvinism or racial hatred. To me all men are equal; there are flatheads everywhere and I despise them all equally.
—Karl Kraus, 1909Seafarers go to sleep in the evening not knowing whether they will find themselves at the bottom of the sea the next morning.
—Jean de Joinville, c. 1305’Tis the destroyer, or the devil, that scatters plagues about the world.
—Cotton Mather, 1693A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
—James Joyce, 1922After midnight the moon set and I was alone with the stars. I have often said that the lure of flying is the lure of beauty, and I need no other flight to convince me that the reason flyers fly, whether they know it or not, is the aesthetic appeal of flying.
—Amelia Earhart, 1935Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term art, I should call it “the reproduction of what the senses perceive in nature through the veil of the soul.” The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of “artist.”
—Edgar Allan Poe, 1849