The fear of the Lord is true wisdom, and he who hath it not can in no way penetrate the true secrets of magic.
—Abraham the Jew, c. 1400
Archive
Quotes
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, 1763Animals are good to think with.
—Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1962However harmless a thing is, if the law forbids it, most people will think it wrong.
—W. Somerset Maugham, 1896You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers.
—Walter Lippmann, 1913Art is a jealous mistress, and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture, or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860The bathing was so delightful this morning, and Molly so pressing with me to enjoy myself, that I believe I stayed in rather too long, as since the middle of the day I have felt unreasonably tired. I shall be more careful another time, and shall not bathe tomorrow as I had before intended.
—Jane Austen, 1804If not us, who? If not now, when?
—Czech slogan, 1989‘Tis a superstition to insist on a special diet. All is made at last of the same chemical atoms.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860Every fool becomes a philosopher after ten days of rain.
—Clover Adams, 1882Good men must not obey the laws too well.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844Let my epitaph be, “Here lies Joseph, who failed in everything he undertook.”
—Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, 1790Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.
—Arthur Miller, 2001