All the world is topsy-turvy, and it has been topsy-turvy ever since the plague.
—Jack London, 1912
Archive
Quotes
The sea receives us in a proper way only when we are without clothes.
—Pliny the Elder, 77The world is for thousands a freak show; the images flicker past and vanish.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1776Corporations have neither bodies to be punished nor souls to be damned.
—Chinese proverbWants keep pace with wealth always.
—Timothy Titcomb, 1859I have a terrible memory; I never forget a thing.
—Edith Konecky, 1976People living deeply have no fear of death.
—Anaïs Nin, 1935Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.
—Lucretius, c. 58 BCThey say, “We only have the life of this world. We die and we live, and nothing destroys us but time.” Yet, not true knowledge have they of this—only belief.
—The Qur’an, c. 620A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office everyday. Not because he likes it but because he can’t think of anything else to do.
—W.H. Auden, 1946Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a god.
—Jean Rostand, 1939Guard more faithfully the secret which is confided to you than the money which is entrusted to your care.
—Isocrates, c. 370 BCThe only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station.
—Hunter S. Thompson, 1971