He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
—Francis Bacon, 1625
Archive
Quotes
The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of a gun.
—P.G. Wodehouse, 1929Who draws his sword against his prince must throw away the scabbard.
—James Howell, 1659A change in the weather is sufficient to create the world and oneself anew.
—Marcel Proust, c. 1920To put one’s trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1890There is much difference between imitating a good man, and counterfeiting him.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1738Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term art, I should call it “the reproduction of what the senses perceive in nature through the veil of the soul.” The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of “artist.”
—Edgar Allan Poe, 1849Man is no man, but a wolf, to a stranger.
—Plautus, c. 200 BCPower is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
—Henry Kissinger, 1972Information can tell us everything. It has all the answers. But they are answers to questions we have not asked, and which doubtless don’t even arise.
—Jean Baudrillard, c. 1987We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament and embrace it with passion if we want to be happy.
—Cyril Connolly, 1944Sport is the bloom and glow of a perfect health.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1838Two crimes undid me: a poem and a mistake.
—Ovid, 10