If the present be compared with the remote past, it is easily seen that in all cities and in all peoples there are the same desires and the same passions as there always were.
—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1513
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Quotes
Spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of birdsong.
—Rachel Carson, 1962The true art of memory is the art of attention.
—Samuel Johnson, 1759Time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it, cannot be trusted to move at any recognized pace. Usually it loiters, but just when one has come to count upon its slowness, it may suddenly break into a wild irrational gallop.
—Edith Wharton, 1905You may drive out nature with a pitchfork, yet she’ll be constantly running back.
—Horace, 20 BCSeafarers go to sleep in the evening not knowing whether they will find themselves at the bottom of the sea the next morning.
—Jean de Joinville, c. 1305Travel is like adultery: one is always tempted to be unfaithful to one’s own country. To have imagination is inevitably to be dissatisfied with where you live.
—Anatole Broyard, 1989No families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1860Don’t lose your mind unless you have paid for it.
—Stanisław Jerzy Lec, 1957A world is sooner destroyed than made.
—Thomas Burnet, 1684I was born without knowing why, I have lived without knowing why, and I am dying without either knowing why or how.
—Pierre Gassendi, 1655Towns oftener swamp one than carry one out onto the big ocean of life.
—D.H. Lawrence, 1908To know the abyss of the darkness and not to fear it, to entrust oneself to it and whatever may arise from it—what greater gift?
—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1975