Archive

Quotes

’Tis a portentous sign / When a man sweats and at the same time shivers.

—Plautus, c. 180 BC

To lose confidence in one’s body is to lose confidence in oneself.

—Simone de Beauvoir, 1949

I am not Athenian or Greek but a citizen of the world.

—Socrates, c. 420 BC

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

—Mao Zedong, 1938

From hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.

—Herman Melville, 1851

No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens. 

—Abraham Lincoln

The day unravels what the night has woven.

—Walter Benjamin, 1929

The future comes like an unwelcome guest.

—Edmund Gosse, 1873

A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.

—Herman Melville, 1851

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.

—Albert Camus, 1951

So many men, so many opinions.

—Terence, 161 BC

Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but most important, it finds homes for us everywhere.

—Hazel Rochman, 1995

The work of art, just like any fragment of human life considered in its deepest meaning, seems to me devoid of value if it does not offer the hardness, the rigidity, the regularity, the luster on every interior and exterior facet, of the crystal.

—André Breton, 1937