I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.
—George Borrow, 1843
Archive
Quotes
The twilight is the crack between the worlds.
—Carlos Castaneda, 1968In revolutions men fall and rise. Long before this war is over, much as you hear me praised now, you may hear me cursed and insulted.
—William Tecumseh Sherman, 1864If fame is only to come after death, I am in no hurry for it.
—Martial, c. 86It is impossible to please all the world and one’s father.
—Jean de La Fontaine, 1668Happy is the man who hath never known what it is to taste of fame—to have it is a purgatory, to want it is a hell!
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1843The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851Kings and fools know no law.
—German proverbIf you steal, do not steal too much at a time. You may be arrested. Steal cleverly, little by little.
—Mobutu Sese Seko, 1991Modesty is a virtue not often found among poets, for almost every one of them thinks himself the greatest in the world.
—Miguel de Cervantes, 1615Every city has a sex and an age which have nothing to do with demography. Rome is feminine. So is Odessa. London is a teenager, an urchin, and in this hasn’t changed since the time of Dickens. Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.
—John Berger, 1987Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.
—Arthur Miller, 2001Nothing is so much to be shunned as sex relations.
—Saint Augustine, c. 387