Archive

Quotes

All the world is topsy-turvy, and it has been topsy-turvy ever since the plague.

—Jack London, 1912

The sea receives us in a proper way only when we are without clothes.

—Pliny the Elder, 77

The world is for thousands a freak show; the images flicker past and vanish.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1776

Corporations have neither bodies to be punished nor souls to be damned.

—Chinese proverb

Wants keep pace with wealth always.

—Timothy Titcomb, 1859

I have a terrible memory; I never forget a thing.

—Edith Konecky, 1976

People living deeply have no fear of death.

—Anaïs Nin, 1935

Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.

—Lucretius, c. 58 BC

They 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. 620

A 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, 1946

Kill 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, 1939

Guard more faithfully the secret which is confided to you than the money which is entrusted to your care.

—Isocrates, c. 370 BC

The 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