You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.
—Cormac McCarthy, 2005
Archive
Quotes
He may be a patriot for Austria, but the question is whether he is a patriot for me.
—Emperor Francis Joseph, c. 1850The earth is beautiful and bright and kindly, but that is not all. The earth is also terrible and dark and cruel.
—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1970I mean, why on earth (outside sickness and hangovers) aren’t people continually drunk? I want ecstasy of the mind all the time.
—Jack Kerouac, 1957Nothing is hidden from the eyes of the observing world.
—Aleksandr Pushkin, 1837I’ve got some shit I’m conservative about and some shit I’m liberal about. Crime—I’m conservative. Prostitution—I’m liberal.
—Chris Rock, 2008If a king loves music, there is little wrong in the land.
—Mencius, c. 330 BCLanguage is the armory of the human mind and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1817The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease.
—Marianne Moore, 1935All men recognize the right of revolution, that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.
—Henry David Thoreau, 1849The most fitting occupation for a civilized man is to do nothing.
—Théophile Gautier, c. 1835He that commands the sea is at great liberty and may take as much and as little of the war as he will.
—Francis Bacon, c. 1600There is no greater disaster than not to know contentment.
—Laozi, c. 550 BC