Quotes · Skopia

58 quotes

By religion, then, I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life.

James George Frazer

1922

★ 0.8

Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.

Ernest Hemingway

1942

★ 1.2

Religious literature

Law: an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community.

St. Thomas Aquinas

Summa Theologicae · 1273

★ 1.4

Personal journal · Travel writing

My definition of Man is, "a Cooking Animal." The beasts have memory, judgment, and all the faculties and passions of our mind, in a certain degree; but no beast is a cook... Man alone can dress a good dish; and every man whatever is more or less a cook, in seasoning what he himself eats.

James Boswell

1773

★ 1.8

Did you ever hear my definition of marriage? It is, that it resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they can not be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing any one who comes between them.

Sydney Smith

1845

★ 1.8

Short story

Conversation... Is the art of never appearing a bore, of knowing how to say everything interestingly, to entertain with no matter what, to be charming with nothing at all.

Guy de Maupassant

1876

★ 1.8

Novel

Death is like a fisherman, who, having caught a fish in his net, leaves it in the water for a time; the fish continues to swim about, but all the while the net is round it, and the fisherman will snatch it out in his own good time.

Ivan Turgenev

1860

★ 1.9

Diplomacy is to do and say The nastiest thing in the nicest way.

Isaac Goldberg

1927

★ 1.9

Newspaper

We hear war called murder. It is not: it is suicide.

Ramsay MacDonald

1930

★ 1.9

Magazine

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

E.B. White

1944

★ 1.9

Magazine

Tragedy plus time equals comedy.

Steve Allen

1957

★ 1.9

Magazine

Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality.

Iris Murdoch

1959

★ 1.9

Essay

A pistol let off at the ear, not a feather to tickle the intellect.

Charles Lamb

1833

★ 1.9

Essay

Camp is a vision of the world in terms of style-but a particular kind of style. It is the love of the exaggerated, the "off," of things-being-what-they-are-not... The ultimate Camp statement: it's good because it's awful.

Susan Sontag

Notes on Camp · 1964

★ 1.9

Philosophical literature

History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life, and brings us tidings of antiquity.

Cicero

On Oratory · 55 BC

★ 2.0

Scripture · Religious literature

True piety is this: to believe in God, and the Last Day, the angels, the Book, and the Prophets, to give of one's substance, however cherished, to kinsmen, and orphans, the needy, the traveler, beggars, and to ransom the slave, to perform the prayer, to pay the alms.

Muhammad

The Quran, The Koran, 2:177 · 632

★ 2.0

Letter

Grief is a species of idleness.

Samuel Johnson

1773

★ 2.0

Essay · Magazine

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

Oscar Wilde

Fortnightly Review · 1891

★ 2.0

Essay

Crime is naught but misdirected energy.

Emma Goldman

1910

★ 2.0

Political literature

Imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.

Vladimir Lenin

Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism · 1917

★ 2.0

Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.

Vladimir Lenin

1920

★ 2.0

Psychological literature

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

William James

The Principles of Psychology · 1890

★ 2.1

Autobiography and memoir · Philosophical literature

What I understand by "philosopher": a terrible explosive in the presence of which everything is in danger.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Ecce Homo · 1908

★ 2.1

TV program · Comedy (TV)

A date is an experience you have with another person that makes you appreciate being alone.

Larry David

Curb Your Enthusiasm · 2011

★ 2.2

Philosophical dialogue · Dialogue

Who has knowledge of what is to be dreaded and what is not—the man whom I call courageous?

Nicias

Plato, Laches · 380 BC

★ 2.3

Scientific literature

Discovery is discernment, selection.

Henri Poincare

Science and Method · 1908

★ 2.7

Treatise · Political literature

Liberty is a right of doing whatever the laws permits.

Montesquieu

The Spirit of the Laws · 1748

★ 2.9

Essay · Magazine

Kitsch is mechanical and operates by formulas. Kitsch is vicarious experience and faked sensations... Kitsch is the epitome of all that is spurious in the life of our times.

Clement Greenberg

1939

★ 3.5

Sociology

Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhautible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation. Religions, philosophies, arts, the social forms of primitive and historic man, prime discoveries in science and technology, the very dreams that blister sleep, boil up from the basic, magic ring of myth.

Joseph Campbell

1949

★ 3.5

I define a recession as when your neighbor loses his job, but a depression is when you lose your own.

Dave Beck

1954

★ 3.5

Play

The law is not a "light" for you or any man to see by; the law is not an instrument of any kind. The law is a causeway upon which, so long as he keeps to it, a citizen may walk safely.

Robert Bolt

1960

★ 3.5

Poem

Love is a thing. It is a prick, it is a sting, It is a pretty, pretty thing; It is a fire, it is a coal Whose flame creeps in at every hole.

George Peele

1591

★ 3.5

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

H.L. Mencken

1916

★ 3.5

Essay

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

H.L. Mencken

1922

★ 3.5

Poem

Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.

Don Marquis

1927

★ 3.5

Political literature · Philosophical literature

Democracy is a method of finding proximate solutions for insoluble problems.

Reinhold Niebuhr

1944

★ 3.5

Essay

Puritanism—The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

H.L. Mencken

1949

★ 3.6

Novel

Love is two people mutually feeding each other, not one living on the soul of the other like a ghoul.

Bessie Head

1973

★ 3.6

Novel

Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.

Erica Jong

1977

★ 3.6

Novel

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

Ayn Rand

The Fountainhead · 1943

★ 3.7

Legal writing

Justice is the constant and perpetual wish to render to every one his due.

Justinian I

533

★ 3.8

Essay · Nature writing

Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land.

Aldo Leopold

A Sand County Almanac · 1949

★ 4.4

Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.

Allen Saunders

1957

★ 4.4

Novel · Philosophical literature

You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.

Albert Camus

The Fall · 1956

★ 4.5

Treatise · Philosophical literature

Pride is therefore pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.

Baruch Spinoza

Ethics · 1677

★ 4.5

Letter

Happiness is the deferred fulfillment of a prehistoric wish. That is why wealth brings so little happiness; money is not an infantile wish.

Sigmund Freud

1898

★ 4.6

Poem

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.

Robert Frost

1914

★ 5.2

Play

War is capitalism with the gloves off.

Tom Stoppard

1974

★ 5.3

Speech

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

Philip K. Dick

1978

★ 5.3

Novel · Satire

What is Love?... It is the morning and the evening star.

Sinclair Lewis

1927

★ 5.4

A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car.

Kenneth Tynan

1963

★ 6.0

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

Baruch Spinoza

Tractatus Politicus · 1677

★ 6.1

Letter

When a man spends the least possible number of movements over one definite action, that is grace.

Anton Chekhov

1899

★ 6.2

Novel

Man is a creature that can get used to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

The House of the Dead · 1860

★ 6.4

Essay

Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen.

Leo Tolstoy

What Is Art? · 1897

★ 6.4

Politics is show business for ugly people.

Bill Miller

1991

★ 6.9

Political literature

A revolution is not the same as inviting people to dinner, or writing an essay, or painting a picture... A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.

Mao Zedong

1927

★ 7.0

Political literature · Philosophical literature

Curiosity...is a Lust of the mind.

Thomas Hobbes

Leviathan · 1651

★ 8.0

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