If the world were good for nothing else, it is a fine subject for speculation.
—William Hazlitt, 1823
Archive
Quotes
As peace is of all goodness, so war is an emblem, a hieroglyphic, of all misery.
—John Donne, 1622All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it.
—Henry David Thoreau, 1849The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship.
—Winston Churchill, 1943Men take diseases, one of another. Therefore let men take heed of their company.
—William Shakespeare, c. 1600Oh, democracy! Whither are you leading us?
—Aristophanes, 414 BCDivine nature gave the fields; human art built the cities.
—Marcus Terentius Varro, c. 70 BCThe eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.
—Albert Einstein, 1936A passion for horses, players, and gladiators seems to be the epidemic folly of the times. The child receives it in his mother’s womb; he brings it with him into the world, and in a mind so possessed, what room for science, or any generous purpose?
—Tacitus, c. 100Men argue, nature acts.
—Voltaire, 1764Nothing is so much to be shunned as sex relations.
—Saint Augustine, c. 387The best augury of a man’s success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.
—George Eliot, 1876No preacher is listened to but time, which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have in vain tried to put into our heads before.
—Jonathan Swift, 1706