The life of spies is to know, not be known.
—George Herbert, c. 1621
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Quotes
No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes.
—Hannah Arendt, 1963Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.
—Laozi, c. 500 BCThe call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.
—Hermann Hesse, 1950There is a vital force in rumor. Though crushed to earth, to all intents and purposes buried, it can rise again without apparent effort.
—Eleanor Robson Belmont, 1957Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men, but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.
—Joseph Addison, 1711I’m doomed to die, right? Why should I care if I go to Hades either with gout in my leg or a runner’s grace? Plenty of people will carry me there.
—Nicharchus, c. 90Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
—Herman Melville, 1851The first requisite to happiness is that a man be born in a famous city.
—Euripides, c. 415 BCThe transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry to equanimity, receptivity, and peace is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of personal center of energy.
—William James, 1902Take back your golden fiddles, and we’ll beat to open sea.
—Rudyard Kipling, 1892Few sons are equal to their fathers; most fall short, all too few surpass them.
—Homer, c. 750 BCThe more religious a country is, the more crimes are committed in it.
—Napoleon Bonaparte, 1817