One is never as unhappy as one thinks, nor as happy as one hopes.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1664
Archive
Quotes
I hate the present modes of living and getting a living. Farming and shopkeeping and working at a trade or profession are all odious to me. I should relish getting my living in a simple, primitive fashion.
—Henry David Thoreau, 1855Water its living strength first shows, / When obstacles its course oppose.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1815Make human nature your study wherever you reside—whatever the religion or the complexion, study their hearts.
—Ignatius Sancho, 1778Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.
Were 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, 1849There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.
—Walter Bagehot, 1863I proclaim night more truthful than the day.
—Léopold Sédar Senghor, 1956Writing cannot express words fully; words cannot express thoughts fully.
—The Book of Changes, c. 350 BCDespotism subjects a nation to one tyrant—democracy to many.
—Marguerite Gardiner, 1839Knowledge itself is power.
—Francis Bacon, 1597The celestial machine is to be likened not to a divine organism but rather to a clockwork.
—Johannes Kepler, 1605’Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers.
—William Shakespeare, c. 1595