Friends are ourselves.
—John Donne, 1603Quotes
In the name of Hippocrates doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.
—Luis Buñuel, 1983I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.
—George Borrow, 1843Some to the common pulpits, and cry out / “Liberty, freedom, and enfranchisement!”
—William Shakespeare, c. 1599There is no solitude in the world like that of the big city.
—Kathleen Norris, 1931Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of these two has the grander view?
—Victor Hugo, 1862Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be breakthrough.
—R.D. Laing, 1967Other nations use “force”; we Britons alone use “might.”
—Evelyn Waugh, 1938The first mistake of art is to assume that it’s serious.
—Lester Bangs, 1971Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.
—William Hazlitt, 1819Thou art not to learn the humors and tricks of that old bald cheater, time.
—Ben Jonson, 1601Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
—Reinhold Niebuhr, 1944A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.
—Charles Baudelaire, 1852