Quotidiana

(kwo•ti•de•A•na)

N. 1. The land of everyday, commonplace things; 2. The online compendium of 420 public-domain essays.

Featuring

Joseph Addison Wit and humor, as have a tendency to expose vice and folly, furnish useful diversions.

Francis Bacon There be so many false points of praise, that a man may justly hold it a suspect.

Anna Laetitia Barbauld Is there not A tongue in every star that talks with man, And wooes him to be wise? nor wooes in vain; This dead of midnight is the noon of thought, And wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.

W. N. P. Barbellion My life [is a] struggle with ill-health and ambition, and I have mastered neither.

Hilaire Belloc Time can take only what is ripe, but Death comes always too soon.

Arthur Benson The worth of experience is not measured by what is called success, but rather resides in a fullness of life

Isabella Bird I have found a dream of beauty at which one might look all one’s life and sigh.

Nellie Bly It is only after one is in trouble that one realizes how little sympathy and kindness there are in the world.

Thomas Browne Where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valor to dare to live.

Fanny Burney What strange ideas are taken from mere book-reading.

Margaret Cavendish If tranquility lives in an honest mind the mind dwells in peace.

G. K. Chesterton An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered.

Mary Chudleigh The fear of death is the occasional cause of the greatest part of…mean dishonorable actions.

Elizabeth Clinton The mothers then that refuse to nurse their owne children, doe they not despise God’s providence?

Charles Colton We owe almost all of our knowledge not to those who have agreed, but to those who have differed.

Anna Julia Cooper Nothing natural can be wholly unworthy.

Susan Fenimore Cooper Of the infinite variety of fruits which spring from the bosom of the earth, the trees of the wood are the greatest in dignity.

William Cornwallis It is easier to think well than to do well; and no trial to have handsome dapper conceits run invisibly in a brain.

Abraham Cowley It is a hard and nice subject for a man to write of himself.

William Cowper Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life. Security is an insipid thing.

Thomas Culpeper Though [essays] may gather some honey from the best flowers of wit and learning, they have a limitation from none.

Thomas De Quincey All is finite in the present; and even that finite is infinite in its velocity of flight towards death.

Maria Edgeworth Some people talk of morality, and some of religion, but give me a little snug property.

T. S. Eliot Knowledge is invariably a matter of degree: you cannot put your finger upon even the simplest datum and say this we know.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Our being is descending into us from we know not whence.

Sui Sin Far I have no nationality and am not anxious to claim any. Individuality is more than nationality.

Owen Felltham We begin to be miserable, when we are totally bent on some one temporal object.

Sigmund Freud My main object is to collect everyday material and utilize it scientifically.

Margaret Fuller None can sympathize with thoughts like mine, who are permanently ensnared in the meshes of sect or party.

Katharine Fullerton Gerould Common sense has a deal of caution in it; and do we not, somewhere in the world, need rashness?

Charlotte Perkins Gilman There is nothing in maternity, nothing in the natural relation of the sexes which should make the female the servant of the male.

Oliver Goldsmith From the highest to the lowest, this people seem fond of sights and monsters.

Louise Imogen Guiney It is diverting to study…how many indispensables man can live without.

Gail Hamilton Manhood discovers what childhood can never divine,—that the sorrows of life are superficial, and the happiness…structural.

Jane Ellen Harrison Anyone who cares passionately for abstract discussion, be his hair never so gray,…is in spirit young.

Eliza Haywood To know ourselves, is agreed by all to be the most useful Learning.

William Hazlitt In art, in taste, in life, in speech, you decide from feeling, and not from reason.

James Howell Excuse me that I trouble you thus with these rambling meditations.

William Dean Howells The soul… is the supernal criticism of the deeds done in the body.

David Hume Learning has been as great a Loser by being shut up in Colleges and Cells, and secluded from the World.

Leigh Hunt The test of seeing and hearing… is in the ideas we realize, and the pleasure we derive.

Thomas Henry Huxley A small beginning has led us to a great ending.

Edward Hyde There is nothing worthier of an honest man than to have contention with nobody.

L. P. Jacks The richest and most significant experiences of man…are the least patient of verbal reproduction.

Harriet Jacobs There are wrongs which even the grave does not bury.

Jerome K. Jerome One we discover how to appreciate the timeless values in our daily experiences, we can enjoy the best things in life.

Samuel Johnson Every diversity of art or nature…may supply matter to him whose only rule is to avoid uniformity.

Yoshida Kenko It is a fine thing when a man who thoroughly understands a subject is unwilling to open his mouth.

Caroline Kirkland The wildflowers of Michigan deserve a poet of their own.

Charles Lamb The mighty future is as nothing, being every thing! The past is every thing, being nothing.

Mary Lamb In the most meritorious discharges of those duties the highest praise we can aim at is to be accounted the helpmates of man, who, in return for all he does for us, expects, and justly expects, us to do all in our power to soften and sweeten life.

Walter Savage Landor A man’s vanity tells him what is honor, a man’s conscience what is justice.

Vernon Lee I know few things more odious than the chilly, draughty, emptiness of a place without a history.

Don Marquis The best good that you can possibly achieve is not good enough if you have to strain yourself all the time to reach it.

Edward Sanford Martin It does a comfortable sufferer good to get his head out of his conveniences sometimes and complain.

Harriet Martineau My chief object in life shall be the cultivation of my intellectual powers, with a view to the instruction of others.

Alice Meynell More candid is the author who has no world, but turns that appeal inwards to his own heart.

A. A. Milne There is a crispness about celery that is of the essence of October.

Michel de Montaigne I seek out change indiscriminately and tumultuously. My style and my mind alike go roaming.

Hannah More If all accomplishments could be bought at the price of a single virtue, the purchase would be infinitely dear.

Christopher Morley The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking.

Elisabeth Morris Ground your happiness in a nice dove tailing of eager conviction with tolerant in difference, and you are safe for a lifetime.

William Osler The strength of a student of men is…to study men, their habits…their vices, virtues, and peculiarities.

Ann Plato The graves before me…are thickly deposited. The marble that speak the names, bid us prepare for Death.

Agnes Repplier It has been wisely said that we cannot really love anybody at whom we never laugh.

Grace Little Rhys Eyes and mind soon become accustomed to a miracle that happens every day and in time notice no more.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca That which was bitter to bear is pleasant to have borne; it is natural to rejoice at the ending of one’s ills.

Alexander Smith In my book there is little more life than there is in the market-place on the days when there is no market.

Richard Steele When a man has no design but to speak plain truth, he may say a great deal in a very narrow compass.

Edith Stein My longing for truth was a single prayer.

Robert Lewis Stevenson A happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a five-pound note.

Jonathan Swift It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.

William Temple The first ingredient in conversation is truth, the next good sense, the third good humor, and the fourth wit.

H. M. Tomlinson It is better to obey the mysterious direction … when it points to a new road, however strange that road may be.

Mark Twain The adoption of cremation would relieve us of a muck of threadbare burial-witticisms.

Edith Wharton True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.

Mary Wollstonecraft We must have an object to refer our reflections to, or they will seldom go below the surface.