Fire is a natural symbol of life and passion, though it is the one element in which nothing can actually live.
—Susanne K. Langer, 1942
Archive
Quotes
There is no foreign land; it is the traveler only that is foreign.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1883Hoping for new friendship from old enemies is / Like expecting to find a rose in a furnace.
—Muhammad Baqir Najm-i Sani, 1612Men, my dear, are very queer animals—a mixture of horse nervousness, ass stubbornness, and camel malice.
—T. H. Huxley, 1895Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1871From hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.
—Herman Melville, 1851If the heavens were all parchment, and the trees of the forest all pens, and every human being were a scribe, it would still be impossible to record all that I have learned from my teachers.
—Jochanan ben Zakkai, c. 75Imagine a number of men in chains, all under sentence of death, some of whom are each day butchered in the sight of the others; those remaining see their own condition in that of their fellows and, looking at each other with grief and despair, await their turn. This is an image of the human condition.
—Blaise Pascal, 1669The hatred of relatives is the bitterest.
—Tacitus, 117Animals are in possession of themselves; their soul is in possession of their body. But they have no right to their life, because they do not will it.
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1821The unknown is the largest need of the intellect.
—Emily Dickinson, 1876There’s folks ’ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away the water.
—George Eliot, 1859A mind lively and at ease can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.
—Jane Austen, 1815