Politics is the art of preventing people from
taking part in affairs which properly concern them. Paul
Valéry
Behind every great fortune stands the brooding
presence of a great crime. Lewis Lapham
Will not a tiny speck close to our vision blot
out the glory of the world? George Eliot
Character is not cut in marble . . . It is something
living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do.
George Eliot
Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. A
wise man learns from the mistakes of others. Bismark
The nature of art is to bind the general to
the particular . . . the greatness of the absurd writer consists
in being to find the exact point where they meet in their greatest
disproportion. Albert Camus
Eternal nothingness is made up precisely of
the sum of lives to come which will not be our own. Albert
Camus
Culture is that which man has in his possession
when he has forgotten everything that he has read. Ortega
y Gasset
Only I can know for sure that what I am doing
is a way of not doing something else. Mark Kingwell
All of us are in the gutter, but some of us
are looking at the stars. Oscar Wilde
I was conceived on the circus trail by a traveller
who owned a camel and a mother who swung from the ropes. Rawi
Hage
We find our path by walking it. Maya Angelou
Every individual who make us suffer can be attached
by us to a divinity. Marcel Proust
The demand for secrecy is scarcely more than
the wish of a sick civilization not to learn the progress of
its own disease. Norbert Wiener
Resentment is the poison we drink hoping it
will hurt others. Nelson Mandela
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
Derek Bok
The worst form of inequality is to try to make
unequal things equal. Aristotle
It's easier to build strong children than repair
broken men. Frederick Douglass
Many a person has gone to their sacophagus by
what they put down their esophagus. Ponsy
What we look for in a good book, painting, music
or conversation? A stretch of runway to take off, and return
us to ourselves.Yahia Lababidi
We have two ears and only one tongue in order
that we may hear more and speak less. Diogenes
If you think education is expensive try ignorance.
Derek Bok
There are worse crimes than burning books. One
of them is not reading them. John Berger
We are all dying of miscellany. Emerson
Civilization began the first time an angry person
cast a word instead of a rock. Freud
I suspect that one might acquire a pretty solid
grasp of the concept of infinity by merely reflecting on the
number of idiots in this world. David Solway
All our final decisions are made in a state
of mind that is not going to last. Proust
Literature is a hatchet with which we chop at
the frozen seas inside us. Kafka
The habit of supplying our ideas from foreign
sources enfeebles all internal strength of thought. William
Hazlitt
There are so many who can figure costs and so
few who can measure values. Oscar Wilde
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
Swinburne
Fame is the sum of misunderstandings that accrue
around a name. Rainer Maria Rilke
If every man could read the hearts of others
there would be more men anxious to descend than to rise in life.
Jean Jacques Rousseau.
Almost everyman wastes part of his life in attempts
to display qualities which he does not possess. Samuel Johnson.
Consumerism
is not just relationship to objects, to the things we buy, but
it's a way of life, with its assumption of gratification, of
manageable pleasures, and its ultimate inability to equip us
when we're confronted with real suffering. Jennifer Szalia
There is
no smaller package in all the world than that of a man all wrapped
up in himself. William Sloane Coffin
Faiths must
not be allowed to hide their depradation behind our toleration.
Leon Wieseltier.
First, they
came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did
not speak out. Next, the government came after the socialists,
the trade unionists, the Jews and, finally they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak out for me. Martin Niemoeller.
Not to know
what happened before one was born is always to be a child. Cicero.
War
is God's way of teaching Americans geography. Ambroise Pierce.
God
could not be everywhere and therefore he made mothers. Rudyard
Kipling.
The
essence of being human is that . . . one is prepared in the
end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable
price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals.
George Orwell.
The
real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes,
but in having new eyes. Proust.
The
abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power. Shakespeare.
Never
believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.
Otto von Bismarck.
Speech
is the surplus of our existence over natural being . . . . which
like a wave gathers and poises itself to hurtle beyond its own
limits. Merleau-Ponty
The
intellectual is in search of a doctrine which shall make great
demands on him and cure him of his subjctivity. Merleau-Ponty
What
a child doesn't receive, he can seldom give later. P.D.
James.
The
corruption of reason is shown by the existence of so many different
and extravagant customs. Pascal.
Sophistication
is the ability to approach culture with the mininum amount of
anxiety. Northrup Fry.
You win
a while,
And then it's done,
Your little winning streak. Leonard Cohen.
The welfare
of humanity is always the welfare of tyrants. Camus.
What constitues
the Republic is the total destruction of what is opposed to
it. Saint-Just
He looked
to be filled with a terrible sadness. As if he harbored news
of some horrendous loss that no one else had heard of. Some
vast tragedy not of fact or incident or event but of the way
the world was. Cormac McCarthy
The constellations
. . .
worlds sprawled in their pale ignitions
upon the nameless night. Cormac McCarthy
My candle
burns at both ends
It will not last the night
But ah my foes, and oh, my friends
It gives a lovely light. Edna St. Vincent Millay
