Archive

Quotes

Everyone complains about his memory, and no one complains about his judgment.

—La Rochefoucauld, 1666

Man is always a wizard to man, and the social world is at first magical.

—Jean-Paul Sartre, 1939

The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.

—Donald Barthelme, 1964

I love everyone now that I have gray hair.

—Polatkin, c. 1855

My own experience is that a certain kind of genius among students is best brought out in bed.

—Allen Ginsberg, 1981

There lurks in every human heart a desire of distinction which inclines every man first to hope and then to believe that nature has given him something peculiar to himself. 

—Samuel Johnson, 1763

We are to go to law never to revenge, but only to repair.

—Samuel Pepys, 1661

Once something becomes discernible, or understandable, we no longer need to repeat it. We can destroy it.

—Robert Wilson, 1991

Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion.

—John Berger, 1972

War is the child of pride, and pride the daughter of riches.

—Jonathan Swift, 1697

Sanity is madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled.

—George Santayana, 1920

I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king.

—Elizabeth I, 1588

A dissolute and intemperate youth hands down the body to old age in a worn-out state.

—Cicero, 44 BC