Night is torment. That is why people go to sleep. To avoid clear sight and torment.
—Dorothy M. Richardson, 1923
Archive
Quotes
The happy ending is our national belief.
—Mary McCarthy, 1947How can we bear misfortune most easily? If we see our enemies faring worse.
—Thales of Miletus, c. 585 BCArt lives from constraints and dies from freedom.
—Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1480One man’s loss is another man’s profit.
—Michel de Montaigne, c. 1580I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do—that was one of my favorite things about it—and when I first did it, I felt perverse.
—Diane Arbus, c. 1950If I see something sagging, dragging, or bagging, I’m going to go have the stuff tucked or plucked.
—Dolly Parton, 2003It is remarkable that only small birds properly sing.
—Charles Darwin, 1871All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The violence of revolutions is the violence of men who charge into a vacuum.
—John Kenneth Galbraith, 1977Many a man who thinks to found a home discovers that he has merely opened a tavern for his friends.
—Norman Douglas, 1917The young always have the same problem—how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their elders and copying one another.
—Quentin Crisp, 1968The power which the sea requires in the sailor makes a man of him very fast, and the change of shores and population clears his head of much nonsense of his wigwam.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1870When we define democracy now, it must still be as a thing hoped for but not seen.
—Pearl S. Buck, 1941