A win always seems shallow: it is the loss that is so profound and suggests nasty infinities.
—E.M. Forster, 1919
Archive
Quotes
Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will—whatever we may think.
—Lawrence Durrell, 1957It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.
—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1515A family’s photograph album is generally about the extended family—and, often, is all that remains of it.
—Susan Sontag, 1977Other nations use “force”; we Britons alone use “might.”
—Evelyn Waugh, 1938The sea hath no king but God alone.
—Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1881Time’s violence rends the soul; by the rent eternity enters.
—Simone Weil, 1947No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
—Abraham LincolnThere is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891How sickness enlarges the dimension of a man’s self to himself! He is his own exclusive object.
—Charles Lamb, 1833The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.
—John Nance Garner, c. 1967As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.
—Pope John Paul II, 1986Quarrels would not last long if the fault was only on one side.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1665