Archive

Quotes

Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.

—George Eliot, 1857

I would delight in music, but the music is discordant.

—Xie Lingyun, c. 425

The freedom or immunity from coercion in matters religious, which is the endowment of persons as individuals, is also to be recognized as their right when they act in community. Religious communities are a requirement of the social nature both of man and of religion itself.

—Pope Paul VI, 1965

The past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying.

—John Berger, 1984

Fear is the foundation of most governments. 

—John Adams, 1776

Be courteous to all but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.

—George Washington, 1783

It’s the end of the world every day, for someone.

—Margaret Atwood, 2000

To live for a time close to great minds is the best kind of education.

—John Buchan, 1940

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

—Thomas Jefferson, 1787

Laws, like houses, lean on one another.

—Edmund Burke, 1765

I am a man: I consider nothing human alien to me.

—Terence, 163 BC

A machine is a slave that neither brings nor bears degradation.

—Benjamin Disraeli, 1844

If you have any soul worth expressing, it will show itself in your singing.

—John Ruskin, 1865