If you read somebody’s diary, you get what you deserve.
—David Sedaris, 2004
Archive
Quotes
I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.
—Orson Welles, 1953Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
—Oscar Wilde, 1890The best way to fill time is to waste it.
—Marguerite Duras, 1987Those who give the first shock to a state are the first overwhelmed in its ruin; the fruits of public commotion are seldom enjoyed by him who was the first mover; he only beats the water for another’s net.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580The young leading the young is like the blind leading the blind.
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 1747We possess art lest we perish of the truth.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1887Life is a farce, and should not end with a mourning scene.
—Horace Walpole, 1784Imitate the ass in his love to his master.
—St. John Chrysostom, c. 388To be turned from one’s course by men’s opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation shows a man unfit to hold office.
—Quintus Fabius Maximus, c. 203 BCEverybody says it; and what everybody says must be true.
—James Fenimore Cooper, 1844Why is not a rat as good as a rabbit? Why should men eat shrimps and neglect cockroaches?
—Henry Ward Beecher, 1862The only function of a school is to make self-education easier.
—Isaac Asimov, 1974