An American will build a house in which to pass his old age and sell it before the roof is on.
—Alexis de Tocqueville, 1840
Archive
Quotes
A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.
—Jane Austen, 1814In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.
—Herodotus, 440 BCDon’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.
—Winston Churchill, 1939Dreams have always been my friend, full of information, full of warnings.
—Doris Lessing, 1994Secrets are rarely betrayed or discovered according to any program our fear has sketched out.
—George Eliot, 1860To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.
—Quentin Crisp, 1968There is a kind of revolution of so general a character that it changes the mental tastes as well as the fortunes of the world.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1665But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.
—Genesis, c. 900 BCThe winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
—Edward Gibbon, 1788The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a star.
—Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, 1825At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.
—Rose Macaulay, 1925To live for a time close to great minds is the best kind of education.
—John Buchan, 1940