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Explore 5101 quotes by Writers

We must have religion for religion's sake, morality for morality's sake, as with art for art's sake... The beautiful cannot be the way to what is useful, or to what is good, or to what is holy; it leads only to itself.

Victor Cousin

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Topic

Purpose of art Art

Speaker

Victor Cousin

Source

On the True, the Beautiful and the Good

Medium

Lecture

Language

French

Time

1818 1810s 19th century

Authentication Score 1

Citation

Cousin, Victor. "Du Vrai, du beau, et du bien." Cours de philosophie. École Normale Supérieure, 1818, Paris, France.

I keep writing about the ordinary because for me it's the home of the extraordinary.

Philip Levine

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Topic

Writing The ordinary and mundane

Speaker

Philip Levine

Medium

Interview

Language

English

Time

2001 2000s 21st century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Levine, Philip. "The Unwritten Biography." Interviewed by Edward Hirsch. Poets.org, 29 Aug. 2001, poets.org/text/unwritten-biography-philip-levine-and-edward-hirsch-conversation.

The clock, not the steam-engine, is the key-machine of the modern industrial age.

Lewis Mumford

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Topic

Modern economy Time

Author

Lewis Mumford

Source

Technics and Civilization

Genre

Historical literature

Language

English

Time

1934 1930s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Mumford, Lewis. Technics and Civilization. Harcourt, Brace and Company/Routledge, 1934, ch. 1, sect. 2.

So we think of Marilyn who was every man's love affair with America, Marilyn Monroe who was blonde and beautiful and had a sweet little rinky-dink of a voice and all the cleanliness of all the clean American backyards.

Norman Mailer

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Topic

Marilyn Monroe Blondes America

Author

Norman Mailer

Genre

Biography

Language

English

Time

1973 1970s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Mailer, Norman. Marilyn: A Biography. Grosset & Dunlap, 1973.

I am happiest when I am idle. I could live for months without performing any kind of labour, and at the expiration of that time I should feel fresh and vigorous enough to go right on in the same way for numerous more months.

Artemus Ward

More information about this quote

Topic

Idleness Taking it easy

Author

Artemus Ward

Medium

Personal journal

Language

English

Time

1867 1860s 19th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Ward, Artemus. Artemus Ward in London, and Other Papers. New York: G.W. Carleton & Co./London: S. Low, Son & Co., 1867, ch. 9.

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy.

Carl Jung

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Topic

Reason and emotion Reason Emotions

Author

Carl Jung

Source

Psychological Types

Genre

Psychological literature

Language

German

Time

1921 1920s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Jung, Carl. Psychologische Typen [Psychological Types]. Rascher Verlag, 1921.

Current Citation

Jung, Carl. Psychological Types, edited by R. F. C. Hull, translated by H. G. Baynes. Princeton University Press, 1976.

The right sort of love is recognized by the sort of joy, of general excitement, of exultant life which the presence of someone produces in us and which distinguishes them. You feel better when with them.

Paul Valéry

More information about this quote

Topic

Being in love Love

Author

Paul Valéry

Source

Journals of Paul Valéry

Medium

Personal journal

Language

French

Time

20th century

Authentication Score 1

Citation

Valéry, Paul. Notebook entry. c. 1945.

Deceive not thyself by overexpecting happiness in the married estate... Remember the nightingales which sing only some months in the spring, but commonly are silent when they have hatched their eggs.

Thomas Fuller (churchman)

The Holy State and the Profane State

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Topic

Marriage

Author

Thomas Fuller (churchman)

Source

The Holy State and the Profane State

Medium

Essay

Genre

Travel writing

Language

English

Time

1642 1640s 17th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Fuller, Thomas. The Holy State and the Profane State. Cambridge: John Williams, 1642, bk. 3, ch. 22.

This country of ours is no sandbank, thrown up by some recent caprice of earth. It is an ancient land, honoured in the archives of civilisation, traceable into antiquity by its piety, its valour, and its sufferings. Every great European race has sent its stream to the river of Irish mind.

Thomas Davis

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Topic

Ireland

Author

Thomas Davis

Source

Literary and Historical Essays

Medium

Essay

Language

English

Time

1846 1840s 19th century

Authentication Score 1

Citation

Davis, Thomas. Literary and Historical Essays. New York: P.M. Haverty, 1879, pt. 3.

Human blunders, however, usually, do more to shape history than human wickedness.

A.J.P. Taylor

The Origins of the Second World War

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More information about this quote

Topic

Nature of history History

Author

A.J.P. Taylor

Source

The Origins of the Second World War

Genre

Historical literature

Language

English

Time

1961 1960s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Taylor, A. J. P. The Origins of the Second World War. Hamish Hamilton, 1961, ch. 10.

Those who have some means think that the most important thing in the world is love. The poor know that it is money.

Gerald Brenan

More information about this quote

Topic

Money The poor Poverty

Author

Gerald Brenan

Source

Thoughts in a Dry Season

Language

English

Time

1978 1970s 20th century

Authentication Score 1

Citation

Brenan, Gerald. Thoughts in a Dry Season: A Miscellany. Cambridge University Press, 1978.

The achieved West had given the United States something that no people had ever had before, an internal, domestic empire.

Bernard De Voto

More information about this quote

Topic

American West

Author

Bernard De Voto

Source

The Year of Decision, 1846

Genre

Historical literature Travel writing

Language

English

Time

1943 1940s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

De Voto, Bernard. The Year of Decision: 1846. Little, Brown and Company, 1943, ch. 17.

Life is short. Work is for those who will never be able to understand life. Idleness cannot degrade a man. To the discriminating eye it differs from laziness.

René Maran

More information about this quote

Topic

Taking it easy Idleness Laziness

Author

René Maran

Medium

Novel

Language

French

Time

1921 1920s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Maran, Rene. Batouala. Albin Michel, 1921, ch. 1.

Current Citation

Maran, Rene. Batouala, translated by Adele Szold Seltzer. Heinemann, 1988, ch. 1.

When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him Vandal. When he wantonly destroys one of the works of God we call him Sportsman.

Joseph Wood Krutch

More information about this quote

Topic

Hunting

Author

Joseph Wood Krutch

Genre

Nature writing Philosophical literature

Language

English

Time

1956 1950s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Krutch, Joseph Wood. "Reverence for Life: The Vandal and the Sportsman." The Great Chain of Life. Houghton Mifflin, 1956.

A car crash harnesses elements of eroticism, aggression, desire, speed, drama, kinaesthetic factors, the stylizing of motion, consumer goods, status-all these in one event. I myself see the car crash as a tremendous sexual event really: a liberation of human and machine libido.

J.G. Ballard

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Topic

Car crashes Cars

Speaker

J.G. Ballard

Source

Penthouse Magazine

Medium

Interview Magazine

Language

English

Time

1970 1970s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Ballard, J. G. "The Penthouse Interview: J. G. Ballard: Sci-Fi Seer." Interviewed by Lynn Barber. Penthouse, May 1970, vol. 5, no. 5, pp. 26-30.

Writers the most learned, the most accurate in details, and the soundest in tendency, frequently fall into a habit which can neither be cured nor pardoned-the habit of making history into the proof of their theories.

Lord Acton

More information about this quote

Topic

Confirmation bias

Author

Lord Acton

Genre

Historical literature

Language

English

Time

1907 1900s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Lord Acton. "Mr. Goldwin Smith's Irish History." The History of Freedom and Other Essays. Macmillan, 1907.

Language, that most human invention, can enable what, in principle, should not be possible. It can allow all of us, even the congenitally blind, to see with another person’s eyes.

Oliver Sacks

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Topic

Language Empathy Interconnectedness of all people The human condition

Author

Oliver Sacks

Source

The Mind's Eye

Language

English

Time

2010 2010s 21st century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Sacks, Oliver. The Mind's Eye. Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.

For time is the medium of narration, as it is the medium of life. Both are inextricably bound up with it, as inextricably as are bodies in space. Similarly, time is the medium of music; music divides, measures, articulates time, and can shorten it, yet enhance its value, both at once.

Thomas Mann

The Magic Mountain

More information about this quote

Topic

Time Music

Author

Thomas Mann

Source

The Magic Mountain

Medium

Novel

Language

German

Time

1924 1920s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Mann, Thomas. Der Zauberberg [The Magic Mountain]. S. Fischer Verlag, 1924, ch. 7.

Current Citation

Mann, Thomas. The Magic Mountain. Everyman's Library, 2005, ch. 7.

In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly.

Laura Mulvey

More information about this quote

Topic

Gender relations Patriarchy Oppression of women Women's attractiveness

Author

Laura Mulvey

Source

Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

Medium

Essay

Language

English

Time

1975 1970s 20th century

Authentication Score 2

Citation

Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Screen, 1 Oct. 1975.

America is a nation created by all the hopeful wanderers of Europe, not out of geography and genetics, but out of purpose.

Theodore H. White

More information about this quote

Topic

American character America

Author

Theodore H. White

Source

The Making of the President

Genre

Political literature

Language

English

Time

1961 1960s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

White, Theodore H. The Making of the President 1960. Atheneum Publishers, 1961, ch. 15.