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
Archive
Quotes
The money we have is the means to liberty; that which we pursue is the means to slavery.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, c. 1770The 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, 1862He that would eat the nut must crack the shell.
—Plautus, c. 200 BCThe 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. 600It would be impossible to live for a year without disaster unless one practiced character-reading.
—Virginia Woolf, 1924One 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, 1834Time is a veil interposed between God and ourselves, as our eyelid is between our eye and the light.
—François-René de Chateaubriand, c. 1820To be sick is to enjoy monarchal prerogatives.
—Charles Lamb, 1833I 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, 1793Without a decisive naval force, we can do nothing definitive, and with it, everything honorable and glorious.
—George Washington, 1781Oh, democracy! Whither are you leading us?
—Aristophanes, 414 BCAnimals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
—George Eliot, 1857