Archive

Quotes

Youth is the time to go flashing from one end of the world to the other both in mind and body, to try the manners of different nations, to hear the chimes at midnight.

—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1881

The money we have is the means to liberty; that which we pursue is the means to slavery.

—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, c. 1770

The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realize this: that the human has been roughly handled, but that it has advanced.

—Victor Hugo, 1862

He that would eat the nut must crack the shell.

—Plautus, c. 200 BC

The physician should look upon the patient as a besieged city and try to rescue him with every means that art and science place at his command.

—Alexander of Tralles, c. 600

It would be impossible to live for a year without disaster unless one practiced character-reading.

—Virginia Woolf, 1924

One of the animals which a generous and sociable man would soonest become is a dog. A dog can have a friend; he has affections and character; he can enjoy equally the field and the fireside; he dreams, he caresses, he propitiates; he offends and is pardoned; he stands by you in adversity; he is a good fellow.

—Leigh Hunt, 1834

Time is a veil interposed between God and ourselves, as our eyelid is between our eye and the light.

—François-René de Chateaubriand, c. 1820

To be sick is to enjoy monarchal prerogatives.

—Charles Lamb, 1833

I had rather be in a state of misery and envied for my supposed happiness than in a state of happiness and pitied for my supposed misery.

—Elizabeth Inchbald, 1793

Without a decisive naval force, we can do nothing definitive, and with it, everything honorable and glorious.

—George Washington, 1781

Oh, democracy! Whither are you leading us?

—Aristophanes, 414 BC

Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.

—George Eliot, 1857