All the world is topsy-turvy, and it has been topsy-turvy ever since the plague.
—Jack London, 1912
Archive
Quotes
Best is water.
—Pindar, 476 BCThere 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, 1965As the saying goes, an old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb.
—Chinua Achebe, 1958Friendship itself will not stand the strain of very much good advice for very long.
—Robert Wilson Lynd, 1924Medication alone is not to be relied on. In one half the cases medicine is not needed, or is worse than useless. Obedience to spiritual and physical laws—hygiene of the body and hygiene of the spirit—is the surest warrant for health and happiness.
—Harriot K. Hunt, 1856The law makes ten criminals where it restrains one.
—Voltairine de Cleyre, 1890I mean, why on earth (outside sickness and hangovers) aren’t people continually drunk? I want ecstasy of the mind all the time.
—Jack Kerouac, 1957If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
—Voltaire, 1764I never practice, I always play.
—Wanda Landowska, 1953The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891When poets don’t know what to say and have completely given up on the play, just like a finger, they lift the machine and the spectators are satisfied.
—Antiphanes, c. 350 BCThe sick man is the parasite of society.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1889