Everything remembered is dear, endearing, touching, precious. At least the past is safe—though we didn’t know it at the time.
—Susan Sontag, 1973
Archive
Quotes
Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.
—William Shakespeare, c. 1610Rebellion is no less a sin than divination.
—Book of Samuel, c. 550 BCIt may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me.
—Martin Luther King Jr., 1962It is shameful and inhuman to treat men like chattels to make money by, or to regard them merely as so much muscle or physical power.
—Pope Leo XIII, 1891Of troubles none is greater than to be robbed of one’s native land.
—Euripides, 431 BCIf fame is only to come after death, I am in no hurry for it.
—Martial, c. 86There is a vital force in rumor. Though crushed to earth, to all intents and purposes buried, it can rise again without apparent effort.
—Eleanor Robson Belmont, 1957Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.
—Jane Austen, 1815I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.
—Margaret Atwood, 1976When poets don’t know what to say and have completely given up on the play, just like a finger, they lift the machine and the spectators are satisfied.
—Antiphanes, c. 350 BCThe pleasure we hold in esteem for the course of our lives ought to have a greater share of our time dedicated to it; we should refuse no occasion nor omit any opportunity of drinking, and always have it in our minds.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580In our family, as far as we are concerned, we were born and what happened before that is myth.
—V.S. Pritchett, 1968