I doubt that we have any right to pity the dead for their own sakes.
—Lord Byron, 1817
Archive
Quotes
History in its broadest aspect is a record of man’s migrations from one environment to another.
—Ellsworth Huntington, 1919The most fitting occupation for a civilized man is to do nothing.
—Théophile Gautier, c. 1835A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
—George Bernard Shaw, 1903One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.
—Oscar Wilde, 1894A cruel story runs on wheels, and every hand oils the wheels as they run.
—Ouida, 1880The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.
—George Santayana, 1905Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1755Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term art, I should call it “the reproduction of what the senses perceive in nature through the veil of the soul.” The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of “artist.”
—Edgar Allan Poe, 1849Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one’s own Trojan horse.
—Rebecca West, 1959The world is made of the very stuff of the body.
—Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 1961Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together.
—Anaïs Nin, 1939A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in / A minute to smile and an hour to weep in.
—Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1895