The day unravels what the night has woven.
—Walter Benjamin, 1929
Archive
Quotes
The noblest kind of retribution is not to become like your enemy.
—Marcus Aurelius, c. 175What timid man does not avoid contact with the sick, fearing lest he contract a disease so near?
—Ovid, c. 10To escape its wretched lot, the populace has three ways, two imaginary and one real. The first two are the rum shop and the church; the third is the social revolution.
—Mikhail Bakunin, 1871I am a man: I consider nothing human alien to me.
—Terence, 163 BCIn settling an island, the first building erected by a Spaniard will be a church, by a Frenchman a fort, by a Dutchman a warehouse, and by an Englishman an alehouse.
—Francis Grose, 1787Nature’s rules have no exceptions.
—Herbert Spencer, 1851Do not ask me to be kind; just ask me to act as though I were.
—Jules Renard, 1898We should always presume the disease to be curable until its own nature proves it otherwise.
—Peter Mere Latham, c. 1845Happiness (as the mathematicians might say) lies on a curve, and we approach it only by asymptote.
—Christopher Morley, 1919The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.
—Theodor Adorno, 1951With the dead there is no rivalry.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1839The thirsty earth soaks up the rain, / And drinks, and gapes for drink again.
—Abraham Cowley, 1656