Miscellaneous quotes
973 quotes from 439 people
In the fields of observation chance favours only the prepared mind.
Louis Pasteur1822–1895Lecture, University of Lille (7 December 1854)Dear incomprehension, it’s thanks to you I’ll be myself, in the end.
Samuel Beckett1906–1989The Unnamable (1954)Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.
D. H. Lawrence1885–1930Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928), First paragraphPeople don’t change or improve much, but they do evolve. It is very slow.
Martin Amis1949–2023“Political Correctness: Robert Bly and Philip Larkin” (1997)The difficult thing isn’t living with other people, it’s understanding them.
José Saramago1922–2010Blindness (1995), p. 284I hold that man is in the right who is most closely in league with the future.
Henrik Ibsen1828–1906Letter to Georg Brandes (3 January 1882).Yesterday is yesterday. If we try to recapture it, we will only lose tomorrow.
Bill Clintonborn 1946President Clinton’s speech at the 200th anniversary of the University of North Carolina.One does not get better but different and older and that is always a pleasure.
Gertrude Stein1874–1946Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (22 May 1925), published in Fitzgerald’s The Crack-Up (1945)A philosophy has a practical power: it contributes to the changing of the world.
Umberto Eco1932–2016Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (1984), [O] : Introduction, 0.7There was no difference between the behavior of a god and the operations of pure chance.
Thomas Pynchonborn 1937Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), Pt. 3Like art, revolutions come from combining what exists into what has never existed before.
Gloria Steinem1934–2026Moving Beyond Words (1994), Part 4: The Masculinization of Wealth, p. 196It is not possible to remake the world. You can fix parts, but you can’t remake the world.
Ed Koch1924–2013Mayor (1984), p. 304I don’t really live on compliments. As a matter of fact, they have a way of distracting me.
Jimi Hendrix1942–1970Dick Cavett interview (1969)The theater is so endlessly fascinating because it’s so accidental. It’s so much like life.
Arthur Miller1915–2005The New York Times (May 9, 1984)Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement.
William Morris1834–1896“The Prospects of Architecture in Civilisation”, lecture at the London Institution (10 March 1880), in Hopes and Fears for Art (1882)