You are dust, and to dust you shall return.
—Book of Genesis, c. 800 BC
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Quotes
Time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it, cannot be trusted to move at any recognized pace. Usually it loiters, but just when one has come to count upon its slowness, it may suddenly break into a wild irrational gallop.
—Edith Wharton, 1905The art of invention grows young with the things invented.
—Francis Bacon, 1605Unexemplary words and unfounded doctrines are avoided by the noble person. Why utter them?
—Dong Zhongshu, c. 120 BCThere is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1790Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will—whatever we may think.
—Lawrence Durrell, 1957The surest guide to the correctness of the path that women take is joy in the struggle. Revolution is the festival of the oppressed.
—Germaine Greer, 1970All law is of necessity defective in the beginning.
—Han Yu, c. 800It is so difficult not to become vain about one’s own good luck.
—Simone de Beauvoir, 1963As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.
—Pope John Paul II, 1986I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!
—George H. W. Bush, 1990A criminal may improve and become a decent member of society. A foreigner cannot improve. Once a foreigner, always a foreigner. There is no way out for him.
—George Mikes, 1946Speech is the mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so is he.
—Publilius Syrus, c. 50 BC