To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.
—Walter Pater, 1873
Archive
Quotes
How sweet it is to have people point and say, “There he is.”
—Persius, c. 60Oil dependency is not just an economic attachment but appears as a kind of cognitive compulsion.
—Peter Hitchcock, 2010An American will build a house in which to pass his old age and sell it before the roof is on.
—Alexis de Tocqueville, 1840More pernicious nonsense was never devised by man than treaties of commerce.
—Benjamin Disraeli, 1880I looked and there was a pale green horse! Its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed with him.
—Book of Revelations, c. 90Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.
—Socrates, c. 430 BCLanguage is the armory of the human mind and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1817A private sin is not so prejudicial in this world as a public indecency.
—Miguel de Cervantes, 1615I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king.
—Elizabeth I, 1588It is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear.
—Charlotte Brontë, 1847Don’t lose your mind unless you have paid for it.
—Stanisław Jerzy Lec, 1957Many a man who thinks to found a home discovers that he has merely opened a tavern for his friends.
—Norman Douglas, 1917