The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a star.
—Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, 1825
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Quotes
Seize from every moment its unique novelty, and do not prepare your joys.
—André Gide, 1897Life is a farce, and should not end with a mourning scene.
—Horace Walpole, 1784A bull contents himself with one meadow, and one forest is enough for a thousand elephants; but the little body of a man devours more than all other living creatures.
—Seneca the Younger, c. 64God sells us all things at the price of labor.
—Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1500He who sings frightens away his ills.
—Miguel de Cervantes, 1605What the brain does by itself is infinitely more fascinating and complex than any response it can make to chemical stimulation.
—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1971To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel that discernment is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion—a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge. One may have that condition by fits only.
—George Eliot, c. 1872I have been a stranger here in my own land all my life.
—Sophocles, c. 441 BCRebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1776The best moment of love is when the lover leaves in the taxi.
—Michel Foucault, c. 1982What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous.
—Voltaire, 1723I do not mean to call an elephant a vulgar animal, but if you think about him carefully, you will find that his nonvulgarity consists in such gentleness as is possible to elephantine nature—not in his insensitive hide, nor in his clumsy foot, but in the way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way; and in his sensitive trunk, and still more sensitive mind, and capability of pique on points of honor.
—John Ruskin, 1860