I’ve seen the future, brother; it is murder.
—Leonard Cohen, 1992Quotes
No lyric poems live long or please many people which are written by drinkers of water.
—Horace, 20 BCThe distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.
—Donald Barthelme, 1964How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.
—Søren Kierkegaard, 1843The planet keeps to the astronomer’s timetable, but the wind still bloweth almost where it listeth.
—John Henry Poynting, 1899One race there is of men, one of gods, but from one mother we both draw our breath.
—Pindar, c. 450 BCHe who dies of epidemic disease is a martyr.
—Muhammad, c. 630What can you conceive more silly and extravagant than to suppose a man racking his brains and studying night and day how to fly?
—William Law, 1728Will and energy sometimes prove greater than either genius or talent or temperament.
—Isadora Duncan, c. 1902Peace is a natural effect of trade.
—Montesquieu, 1748Show me someone who never gossips, and I’ll show you someone who isn’t interested in people.
—Barbara Walters, 1975It is one thing to slander, another to accuse.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 56 BCThe believer in magic and miracles reflects on how to impose a law on nature—and, in brief, the religious cult is the outcome of this reflection.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1878