Archive

Quotes

To live for a time close to great minds is the best kind of education.

—John Buchan, 1940

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

—Jeremy Bentham, c. 1832

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

—Oscar Wilde, 1890

The future, like everything else, is no longer quite what it used to be.

—Paul Valéry, 1931

I have loved the stars too truly to be fearful of the night.

—Sarah Williams, 1868

I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.

—Mitch Hedberg, 1999

We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.

—Oscar Wilde, 1887

Health indeed is a precious thing, to recover and preserve which we undergo any misery, drink bitter potions, freely give our goods—restore a man to his health, his purse lies open to thee.

—Robert Burton, 1621

Many a man who thinks to found a home discovers that he has merely opened a tavern for his friends.

—Norman Douglas, 1917

The belly is the teacher of the arts and bestower of invention.

—Persius, c. 55

The planet keeps to the astronomer’s timetable, but the wind still bloweth almost where it listeth.

—John Henry Poynting, 1899

I am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young. That’s what sitting on your ass does to your face.

—Leonard Cohen, 1970

Once you hear the details of a victory it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.

—Jean-Paul Sartre, 1951