Archive

Quotes

Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.

—Alexander Pope, 1738

The human body is the best picture of the human soul.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein, c. 1947

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

—Upton Sinclair, 1935

Only the little people pay taxes.

—Leona Helmsley, 1989

They exchange their home and sweet thresholds for exile, and seek under another sun another home.

—Virgil, c. 30 BC

I began revolution with eighty-two men. If I had to do it again, I do it with ten or fifteen and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action.

 

—Fidel Castro, 1959

The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea.

—James Joyce, 1922

If you were to ask me if I’d ever had the bad luck to miss my daily cocktail, I’d have to say that I doubt it; where certain things are concerned, I plan ahead.

—Luis Buñuel, 1983

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

—Alexander Hamilton, 1787

Darkness endows the small and ordinary ones among mankind with poetical power.

—Thomas Hardy, 1874

It’s easy to be independent when you’ve got money. But to be independent when you haven’t got a thing—that’s the Lord’s test.

—Mahalia Jackson, 1966

Democracy produces both heroes and villains, but it differs from a fascist state in that it does not produce a hero who is a villain.

—Margaret Halsey, 1946

If the bird does like its cage, and does like its sugar, and will not leave it, why keep the door so very carefully shut?

—Olive Schreiner, 1883