Anyone who has a child should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he’ll escape.
—W.H. Auden, 1947
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Quotes
Pictures made in childhood are painted in bright hues.
—Kate Douglas Wiggin, 1886Religion is by no means a proper subject of conversation in mixed company.
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 1754Wit enables us to act rudely with impunity.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1678Often the prudent, far from making their destinies, succumb to them; it is destiny which makes them prudent.
—Voltaire, 1764They say, “We only have the life of this world. We die and we live, and nothing destroys us but time.” Yet, not true knowledge have they of this—only belief.
—The Qur’an, c. 620Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.
—Albert Camus, 1951Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.
—Frank Zappa, 1989Again, men in general desire the good, and not merely what their fathers had.
—Aristotle, c. 350 BCThey exchange their home and sweet thresholds for exile, and seek under another sun another home.
—Virgil, c. 30 BCAs matron and mistress will differ in temper and tone, so will the friend be distinct from the faithless parasite.
—Horace, c. 20 BCCasting lots causes contentions to cease, and keeps the mighty apart.
—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BCWhat a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books; we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.
—Robert Burton, 1621