Archive

Quotes

Sex is the last refuge of the miserable.

—Quentin Crisp, 1968

Dread attends the unknown.

—Nadine Gordimer, 1998

I have learned much from disease which life could never have taught me anywhere else.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1830

A world is sooner destroyed than made.

—Thomas Burnet, 1684

I always think of nature as a great spectacle, somewhat resembling the opera.

—Bernard de Fontenelle, 1686

I was born at a very early age. Before I had time to regret it, I was four and a half years old.

—Groucho Marx, 1959

Few sons are equal to their fathers; most fall short, all too few surpass them. 

—Homer, c. 750 BC

The country only has charms for those not obliged to stay there. 

—Édouard Manet, c. 1860

Now there is fame! Of all—hunger, misery, the incomprehension by the public—fame is by far the worst. It is the castigation by God of the artist. It is sad. It is true.

—Pablo Picasso, c. 1961

God is making commerce his missionary.

—Joseph Cook, c. 1877

It would be impossible to live for a year without disaster unless one practiced character-reading.

—Virginia Woolf, 1924

The 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, 1961

To safeguard one’s health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness indeed.

—La Rochefoucauld, 1678