Archive

Quotes

The civilized man has built a coach but has lost the use of his feet.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841

I hate the whole race. There is no believing a word they say—your professional poets, I mean—there never existed a more worthless set than Byron and his friends for example.

—Duke of Wellington, c. 1810

The future is no more uncertain than the present.

—Walt Whitman, 1856

It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter.

—Lewis Strauss, 1954

There lurks in every human heart a desire of distinction which inclines every man first to hope and then to believe that nature has given him something peculiar to himself. 

—Samuel Johnson, 1763

After each night we are emptier: our mysteries and our griefs have leaked away into our dreams.

—E.M. Cioran, 1949

Death keeps no calendar.

—George Herbert, 1640

Nothing is so much to be shunned as sex relations.

—Saint Augustine, c. 387

The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.

—William Blake, 1793

I am dying with the help of too many physicians.

—Alexander the Great, c. 323 BC

There is no small pleasure in sweet water.

—Ovid, c. 10

Man is merely a more perfect animal than the rest. He reasons better.

—Napoleon Bonaparte, 1816

The law makes ten criminals where it restrains one.

—Voltairine de Cleyre, 1890