Methinks the human method of expression by sound of tongue is very elementary and ought to be substituted for some ingenious invention which should be able to give vent to at least six coherent sentences at once.
—Virginia Woolf, 1899
Archive
Quotes
In every man is a wild beast; most of them don’t know how to hold it back, and the majority give it full rein when they are not restrained by terror of law.
—Frederick the Great, 1759The newspaper is the natural enemy of the book, as the whore is of the decent woman.
—Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, 1858All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The violence of revolutions is the violence of men who charge into a vacuum.
—John Kenneth Galbraith, 1977Sick, irritated, and the prey to a thousand discomforts, I go on with my labor like a true workingman, who, with sleeves rolled up, in the sweat of his brow, beats away at his anvil, not caring whether it rains or blows, hails or thunders.
—Gustave Flaubert, 1845Wherever commerce prevails there will be an inequality of wealth, and wherever the latter does a simplicity of manners must decline.
—James Madison, 1783Many a man who thinks to found a home discovers that he has merely opened a tavern for his friends.
—Norman Douglas, 1917Years are nothing to me—they should be nothing to you. Who asked you to count them or to consider them? In the world of wild nature, time is measured by seasons only—the bird does not know how old it is—the rose tree does not count its birthdays!
—Marie Corelli, 1911One man’s loss is another man’s profit.
—Michel de Montaigne, c. 1580Lord, I do not ask that thou shouldst give me wealth; only show me where it is, and I will attend to the rest.
—Kate Douglas Wiggin, 1898All art is a revolt against man’s fate.
—André Malraux, 1951Educate people without religion and you make them but clever devils.
—Arthur Wellesley, c. 1830One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1911