Archive

Quotes

If I see something sagging, dragging, or bagging, I’m going to go have the stuff tucked or plucked.

—Dolly Parton, 2003

We do not suffer by accident. 

—Jane Austen, 1813

With the dead there is no rivalry.

—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1839

Insurgents are like conquerors: they must go forward; the moment they are stopped, they are lost.

—Duke of Wellington, c. 1819

At the start there’s always energy.

—Suzan-Lori Parks, 2006

This is a fault common to all singers, that among their friends they will never sing when they are asked; unasked, they will never desist.

—Horace, c. 35 BC

Memories are like corks left out of bottles. They swell. They no longer fit.

—Harriet Doerr, 1978

To live exiled from a place you have known intimately is to experience sensory deprivation. A wide-awake coma.

—Gretel Ehrlich, 1994

The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.

—Plato, c. 375 BC

Epitaph, n. An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

Whatsoever was the father of a disease, an ill diet was the mother.

—George Herbert, 1651

We want a lot of engineers in the modern world, but we do not want a world of engineers.

—Winston Churchill, 1948

Rewards and punishment are the lowest form of education.

—Zhuangzi, c. 286 BC