The doctor occupies a seat in the front row of the stalls of the human drama, and is constantly watching and even intervening in the tragedies, comedies, and tragicomedies which form the raw material of the literary art.
—W. Russell Brain, 1952
Archive
Quotes
What keeps the democracy alive at all but the hatred of excellence, the desire of the base to see no head higher than their own?
—Mary Renault, 1956Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
—William James, 1902Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.
—William Hazlitt, 1819The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station.
—Hunter S. Thompson, 1971The only competition worthy a wise man is with himself.
—Anna Jameson, 1846Do we want laurels for ourselves most, / Or most that no one else shall have any?
—Amy Lowell, 1922Sport is the bloom and glow of a perfect health.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1838Better free in a strange land than a slave at home.
—German proverbIt is impossible to please all the world and one’s father.
—Jean de La Fontaine, 1668Fame is no sanctuary from the passing of youth. Suicide is much easier and more acceptable in Hollywood than growing old gracefully.
—Julie Burchill, 1986Life isn’t all beer and skittles, but beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form a good part of every Englishman’s education.
—Thomas Hughes, 1857There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness.
—H.L. Mencken, 1920