The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
—L.P. Hartley, 1953
Archive
Quotes
There never was a good war or a bad peace.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1773Nothing is so much to be shunned as sex relations.
—Saint Augustine, c. 387It is wretched business to be digging a well just as you’re dying of thirst.
—Plautus, c. 193 BCThere are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1866All men naturally hate each other. We have used concupiscence as best we can to make it serve the common good, but this is mere sham and a false image of charity, for essentially it is just hate.
—Blaise Pascal, c. 1655Many need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves excelled.
—Samuel Johnson, 1751Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.
—Tom Robbins, 1976A whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
—Herman Melville, 1851It is permitted to learn even from an enemy.
—Ovid, c. 8Without music life would be a mistake.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1889Trade’s proud empire hastes to swift decay.
—Oliver Goldsmith, 1770Do not fear the clatter of wheels, the bumps and slops in corridors. It is only turbulence.
—Romalyn Ante, 2020