Archive

Quotes

One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.

—E.B. White, 1958

There is no work of human hands which time does not wear away and reduce to dust.

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 46 BC

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.

—Elbert Hubbard, 1911

Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.

—William Empson, 1928

No time to marry, no time to settle down, I’m a young woman, and ain’t done runnin’ round.

—Bessie Smith, 1926

The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.

—Sigmund Freud, 1912

The past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying.

—John Berger, 1984

Jazz is the result of the energy stored up in America.

—George Gershwin, 1933

They say, “We only have the life of this world. We die and we live, and nothing destroys us but time.” Yet, not true knowledge have they of this—only belief.

—The Qur’an, c. 620

The human working stock is of interest only insofar as it is profitable.

—Simone de Beauvoir, 1970

O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified!

—William Shakespeare, c. 1596

You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.

—Leon Trotsky

Often the prudent, far from making their destinies, succumb to them; it is destiny which makes them prudent.

—Voltaire, 1764