Sex is the last refuge of the miserable.
—Quentin Crisp, 1968
Archive
Quotes
Dread attends the unknown.
—Nadine Gordimer, 1998I have learned much from disease which life could never have taught me anywhere else.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1830A world is sooner destroyed than made.
—Thomas Burnet, 1684I always think of nature as a great spectacle, somewhat resembling the opera.
—Bernard de Fontenelle, 1686I was born at a very early age. Before I had time to regret it, I was four and a half years old.
—Groucho Marx, 1959Few sons are equal to their fathers; most fall short, all too few surpass them.
—Homer, c. 750 BCThe country only has charms for those not obliged to stay there.
—Édouard Manet, c. 1860Now 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. 1961God is making commerce his missionary.
—Joseph Cook, c. 1877It would be impossible to live for a year without disaster unless one practiced character-reading.
—Virginia Woolf, 1924The 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, 1961To safeguard one’s health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness indeed.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1678