Nature resolves everything into its component elements, but annihilates nothing.
—Lucretius, c. 57 BC
Archive
Quotes
Time’s violence rends the soul; by the rent eternity enters.
—Simone Weil, 1947I’m doomed to die, right? Why should I care if I go to Hades either with gout in my leg or a runner’s grace? Plenty of people will carry me there.
—Nicharchus, c. 90Exile lacks the grandeur, the majesty, of expatriation.
—Bharati Mukherjee, 1999Every man is worth just so much as the things he busies himself with.
—Marcus Aurelius, c. 175The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.
—Albert Einstein, 1936He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
—Francis Bacon, 1625Who hears the fishes when they cry?
—Henry David Thoreau, 1849A traveler’s chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad—as well as good—example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.
—Jonathan Swift, 1726Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.
—Tom Robbins, 1976Every gift has a personality—that of its giver.
—Nuruddin Farah, 1992If you read somebody’s diary, you get what you deserve.
—David Sedaris, 2004Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
—B.F. Skinner, 1964