Men are what their mothers made them.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860
Archive
Quotes
Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.
—William Empson, 1928One should always have one’s boots on and be ready to leave.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
—Pablo Neruda, 1924To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance.
—Jean Genet, 1949Animals are good to think with.
—Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1962When we define democracy now, it must still be as a thing hoped for but not seen.
—Pearl S. Buck, 1941No poems can please long, nor live, that are written by water drinkers.
—Horace, 35 BCI am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.
—Samuel Johnson, 1773The human body is the best picture of the human soul.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein, c. 1947Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.
—Epictetus, c. 100Our nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.
—Blaise Pascal, c. 1640O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes.
—William Shakespeare, c. 1599