Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.
—Jane Austen, 1815
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Quotes
Memories are like corks left out of bottles. They swell. They no longer fit.
—Harriet Doerr, 1978In tampering with the earth, we tamper with a mystery.
—Jonathan Schell, 2000If you would help another man, you must do so in minute particulars.
—William Blake, 1804A tree’s a tree. How many more do you need to look at?
—Ronald Reagan, 1965If law and justice do not attain their ends, the people will be unable to move hand or foot.
—Confucius, c. 500He that raises a large family, does indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand…a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1786In settling an island, the first building erected by a Spaniard will be a church, by a Frenchman a fort, by a Dutchman a warehouse, and by an Englishman an alehouse.
—Francis Grose, 1787I never know quite when I’m not writing. Sometimes my wife comes up to me at a party and says, Dammit, Thurber, stop writing. She usually catches me in the middle of a paragraph. Or my daughter will look up from the dinner table and ask, Is he sick? No, my wife says, he’s writing something.
—James Thurber, 1955The misfortune of the man of color is having been enslaved. The misfortune and inhumanity of the white man are having killed man somewhere.
—Frantz Fanon, 1952Revenge may be wicked, but it’s natural.
—William Makepeace Thackeray, 1847There are times when reality becomes too complex for oral communication. But legend gives it a form by which it pervades the whole world.
—Jean-Luc Godard, 1965Civilization, as we know it, is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor.
—Arnold Toynbee, 1948