Ours is an age which consciously pursues health, and yet only believes in the reality of sickness.
—Susan Sontag, 1963
Archive
Quotes
I don’t try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.
—Ray Bradbury, 1992Seize from every moment its unique novelty, and do not prepare your joys.
—André Gide, 1897Friendship was given by nature to be an assistant to virtue, not a companion to vice.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, c. 45 BCAnd to our age’s drowsy blood / Still shouts the inspiring sea.
—James Russell Lowell, 1848Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term art, I should call it “the reproduction of what the senses perceive in nature through the veil of the soul.” The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of “artist.”
—Edgar Allan Poe, 1849A joke is at most a temporary rebellion against virtue, and its aim is not to degrade the human being but to remind him that he is already degraded.
—George Orwell, 1945A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.
—George Bernard Shaw, 1944A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast.
—The BibleCelibacy goes deeper than the flesh.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1920The mere existence of nuclear weapons by the thousands is an incontrovertible sign of human insanity.
—Isaac Asimov, 1988Nothing is hidden from the eyes of the observing world.
—Aleksandr Pushkin, 1837There’s folks ’ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away the water.
—George Eliot, 1859