The noblest kind of retribution is not to become like your enemy.
—Marcus Aurelius, c. 175
Archive
Quotes
A friend in power is a friend lost.
—Henry Adams, 1905I’ve a grand memory for forgetting.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don’t know.
—Albert Camus, 1942The righteous know the needs of their animals, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel.
—Book of Proverbs, c. 500 BCA traveler’s chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad—as well as good—example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.
—Jonathan Swift, 1726Physician, heal yourself: thus you help your patient too. Let his best help be to see with his own eyes the man who makes himself well.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, c. 1884Bright youth passes as quickly as thought.
—Theognis, c. 550 BCReal education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing—the rest is mere sheep herding.
—Ezra Pound, 1934Nothing is as obnoxious as other people’s luck.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1938It is hell to belong to a suppressed minority.
—Claude McKay, 1937An 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 BCI believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be a Catholic) how to act and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote.
—John F. Kennedy, 1960