Art imitates nature as well as it can, as a pupil follows his master; thus it is a sort of grandchild of God.
—Dante, c. 1315
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Quotes
The 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, 1952After midnight the moon set and I was alone with the stars. I have often said that the lure of flying is the lure of beauty, and I need no other flight to convince me that the reason flyers fly, whether they know it or not, is the aesthetic appeal of flying.
—Amelia Earhart, 1935The decline of the aperitif may well be one of the most depressing phenomena of our time.
—Luis Buñuel, 1983The life of spies is to know, not be known.
—George Herbert, c. 1621The celestial machine is to be likened not to a divine organism but rather to a clockwork.
—Johannes Kepler, 1605Where shall I, of wandering weary, find my resting place at last?
—Heinrich Heine, 1827We must confess that at present the rich predominate, but the future will be for the virtuous and ingenious.
—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688To escape its wretched lot, the populace has three ways, two imaginary and one real. The first two are the rum shop and the church; the third is the social revolution.
—Mikhail Bakunin, 1871A multitude of small delights constitute happiness.
—Charles Baudelaire, 1897All traveling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity.
—John Ruskin, 1856It is far, far better and much safer to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought.
—John Kenneth Galbraith, 1958Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
—Gore Vidal, 1981