Archive

Quotes

Do you suppose it possible to know democracy without knowing the people?

—Xenophon, c. 370 BC

The future comes like an unwelcome guest.

—Edmund Gosse, 1873

Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.

—G.C. Lichtenberg, c. 1780

Many need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves excelled.

—Samuel Johnson, 1751

Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1915

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

—Mark Twain, 1894

Resentment kills a fool, and envy slays the simple.

—Book of Job, c. 600 BC

We are a commercial people. We cannot boast of our arts, our crafts, our cultivation; our boast is in the wealth we produce.

—Ida M. Tarbell, 1904

Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.

—William Shakespeare, c. 1610

All law is of necessity defective in the beginning.

—Han Yu, c. 800

There is a vital force in rumor. Though crushed to earth, to all intents and purposes buried, it can rise again without apparent effort.

—Eleanor Robson Belmont, 1957

Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.

—Charles Dickens, 1843

Attacks on me will do no harm, and silent contempt is the best answer to them.

—James Monroe, 1808