Spies are of no use nowadays. Their profession is over. The newspapers do their work instead.
—Oscar Wilde, 1895
Archive
Quotes
Death from the bubonic plague is rated, with crucifixion, among the nastiest human experiences of all.
—Guy R. Williams, 1975I am sure of this: that if everybody was to drink their bottle a day, there would not be half the disorders in the world there are now.
—Jane Austen, c. 1798An irreligious man is not one who denies the gods of the majority, but one who applies to the gods the opinions of the majority. For what most men say about the gods are not ideas derived from sensation, but false opinions, according to which the greatest evils come to the wicked, and the greatest blessings come to the good from the gods.
—Epicurus, c. 250 BCThe traveler with nothing on him sings in the robber’s face.
—Juvenal, c. 125Most men employ the first years of their life in making the last miserable.
—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688The world is for thousands a freak show; the images flicker past and vanish.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1776Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.
—Anatole France, 1881And what will history say of me a thousand years hence?
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 59 BCWhat is outside my mind means nothing to it.
—Marcus Aurelius, c. 170The mere existence of nuclear weapons by the thousands is an incontrovertible sign of human insanity.
—Isaac Asimov, 1988In every human breast, God has implanted a principle, which we call love of freedom; it is impatient of oppression and pants for deliverance.
—Phillis Wheatley, 1774If you steal, do not steal too much at a time. You may be arrested. Steal cleverly, little by little.
—Mobutu Sese Seko, 1991