Some Favourite Quotations (Literary and Otherwise)
"I never heard of anyone being happy for forty-two years, and would a person who was happy for forty-two years write a book?" (Harriet Doerr in response to the question of whether she was happy for the forty-two years before she began to write.)
"It is frequently a misfortune to have very brilliant men in charge of affairs. They expect too much of ordinary men." (Thucydides)
"L'enfer, c'est les autres." (Jean-Paul Sartre)
"Oderint dum metuant." (Emperor Tiberius)
"Tα μεγιστα των αγαθων ημιν γιγνεται δια μανιας." (Socrates)
"We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about." (Albert Einstein)
"I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." (Stephen Jay Gould)
"Whenever a genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign: that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." (Jonathan Swift)
"Life conspires to keep a woman tangled in trifles." (Maryon Kantaroff)
"...the play was soup...the audience...art." (Jane Wagner)
"I'm just a guy who probably should have been a semi-talented poet on the Left Bank. I got sort of sidetracked here." (Steve Jobs)
"When I say 'work' I only mean writing. Everything else is just odd jobs." (Margaret Laurence)
Θανατος δε τοι εξ αλος αυτω αβληχρος μαλα τοιος ελευσεται, ος κε σε πεφνη γηρα υπο λυπαρω αρημενον. Αμφι δε λαοι ολβιοι εσσονται. Τα δε τοι νημερτεα ειρω." (Homer)
"When you get there, there is no there there." (Virginia Woolf)