The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletariat to the level of bourgeois stupidity.
—Gustave Flaubert, 1871
Archive
Quotes
Anyone who has passed through the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape.
—William Hazlitt, 1821We and the dead ride quick at night.
—Gottfried August Bürger, 1773In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.
—Voltaire, 1764Memory is the only
afterlife I can understand.
In the name of Hippocrates doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.
—Luis Buñuel, 1983One race there is of men, one of gods, but from one mother we both draw our breath.
—Pindar, c. 450 BCHunting is all that’s worth living for—all time is lost what is not spent in hunting—it is like the air we breathe—if we have it not we die—it’s the sport of kings, the image of war without its guilt.
—Robert Smith Surtees, 1843Nature never jests.
—Albrecht von Haller, 1751If anything affects your eye, you hasten to have it removed; if anything affects your mind, you postpone the cure for a year.
—Horace, 20 BCI have given up considering happiness as relevant.
—Edward Gorey, 1974I find the pain of a little censure, even when it is unfounded, is more acute than the pleasure of much praise.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1789Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
—Paul Valéry, 1943