Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
—Gore Vidal, 1981
Archive
Quotes
War has silenced all laws.
—Lucan, c. 65A god cannot procure death for himself, even if he wished it, which, so numerous are the evils of life, has been granted to man as our chief good.
—Pliny the Elder, c. 77If parents would only realize how they bore their children!
—George Bernard Shaw, c. 1910In our family, as far as we are concerned, we were born and what happened before that is myth.
—V.S. Pritchett, 1968Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave.
—Thomas Browne, 1658The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes “sightseeing.”
—Daniel Boorstin, 1961There was a great deal of drinking among us but little drunkenness. We all seemed to feel that Prohibition was a personal affront and that we had a moral duty to undermine it.
—Elizabeth Anderson, 1969When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.
—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1969I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.
—George Borrow, 1843Slang is as old as speech and the congregating together of people in cities. It is the result of crowding and excitement and artificial life.
—John Camden Hotten, 1859I never practice, I always play.
—Wanda Landowska, 1953Despotism subjects a nation to one tyrant—democracy to many.
—Marguerite Gardiner, 1839