Archive

Quotes

All traveling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity.

—John Ruskin, 1856

Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men, but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.

—Joseph Addison, 1711

He who would be happy should stay at home.

—Greek proverb

To endeavor to forget anyone is a certain way of thinking of nothing else.

—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688

Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so shall you come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1838

See one promontory (said Socrates of old), one mountain, one sea, one river, and see all.

—Robert Burton, c. 1620

Nature never breaks her own laws.

—Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1500

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

—Oscar Wilde, 1891

Time robs us of all, even of memory.

—Virgil, c. 40 BC

Water, thou hast no taste, no color, no odor; canst not be defined, art relished while ever mysterious.

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1939

It is impossible to translate the poets. Can you translate music?

—Voltaire, c. 1732

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.

—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1515

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. 

—Zora Neale Hurston, 1942