The Quotes canon
Sourced and curated.
Every quote has been curated by hand and carefully authenticated.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Gustave Flaubert18 quotes
See many skies and seas. — Gustave Flaubert · 1857We shouldn't maltreat our idols: the gilt comes off on our hands. — Gustave Flaubert · 1857Casting aspersions on those we love always does something to loosen our ties. We shouldn't maltreat our idols; the gilt comes off in our hands. — Gustave Flaubert · 1856Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars. — Gustave Flaubert · 1856What is beautiful is moral, that is all there is to it. — Gustave Flaubert · 1880Emma was like all his other mistresses; and as the charm of novelty gradually slipped from her like a piece of her clothing, he saw revealed in all its nakedness the eternal monotony of passion, which always assumes the same forms and always speaks the same language. — Gustave Flaubert · 1856All 18 quotes →J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur5 quotes
There is room for everybody in America; has he any particular talent or industry? He exerts it in order to procure a livelihood, and it succeeds. — J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur · 1782Men are like plants; the goodness and flavor of the fruit proceeds from the peculiar soil and exposition in which they grow. — J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur · 1782Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. — J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur · 1782What then is the American, this new man? He is either a European, or the descendant of a European, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country... Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. — J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur · 1782They are plants that will grow in any soil that is cultivated by the hands of others; and, when once they have taken root, they will extinguish every other vegetable that grows around them... The most ignorant, the most bungling member of that profession, will, if placed in the most obscure part of the country, promote litigiousness, and amass more wealth without labor, than the most opulent farmer with all his toils. — J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur · 1782Georges Braque4 quotes
Truth exists; only lies are invented. — Georges Braque · 1952Art is meant to disturb, science reassures. — Georges Braque · 1952Light is a delicate thing. — Georges BraqueThe only valid thing in art is that which cannot be explained. — Georges Braque · 1957Marcel Duchamp3 quotes
The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges. — Marcel Duchamp · 1917I have a very definite theory-let's call it theory, so that I can be wrong-that a work of art exists only when the spectator has looked at it. — Marcel DuchampAutumn is quite beautiful here but all the same has a funereal air, like all beautiful autumns-something like a funereal relaxation of things. — Marcel DuchampPierre Corneille3 quotes
To conquer without risk is to triumph without glory. — Pierre Corneille · 1636A service beyond all recompense
Weighs so heavy that it almost gives offense. — Pierre Corneille · 1674Do your duty, and leave the outcome to the Gods. — Pierre Corneille · 1640Pierre-Simon Laplace2 quotes
Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective positions of the beings which compose it, if moreover this intelligence were vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in the same formula both the movements of the largest bodies in the universe and those of the lightest atom; to it nothing would be uncertain. And the future as the past would be present to its eyes. — Pierre-Simon Laplace · 1812The theory of probabilities is at bottom only common sense reduced to calculus. — Pierre-Simon Laplace · 1814Remy de Gourmont2 quotes
Of all sexual aberrations perhaps the most curious is chastity. — Remy de Gourmont · 1903Man is a successful animal, that's all. — Remy de Gourmont · 1905Alain (Emile Chartier)1 quote
Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you have only one idea. — Alain (Emile Chartier) · 1938Christian Dior1 quote
In a century which attempts to tear the heart out of every mystery, fashion guards its secret well, and is the best possible proof that there is still magic abroad. — Christian Dior · 1956Claude Monet1 quote
I have no other wish than a close fusion with nature. — Claude MonetGuy de Maupassant1 quote
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 · 1876Roland Barthes1 quote
I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object. — Roland Barthes · 1957