Families, I hate you! Shut-in homes, closed doors, jealous possessions of happiness.
—André Gide, 1897
Archive
Quotes
Men are able to assist fortune but not to thwart her. They can weave her designs, but they cannot destroy them.
—Niccolò Machiavelli, 1531To eat is to appropriate by destruction.
—Jean-Paul Sartre, 1943Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.
—Charles Lamb, 1833A garden must be looked into, and dressed as the body.
—George Herbert, 1640Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1915Wit enables us to act rudely with impunity.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1678The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.
—Basho, c. 1690The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.
—Dean Acheson, 1970Two crimes undid me: a poem and a mistake.
—Ovid, 10Where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
—George Santayana, c. 1905The best of all rulers is but a shadowy presence to his subjects.
—LaoziNo matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
—Abraham Lincoln