Archive

Quotes

We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as its other creatures do.

—Barbara Ward, 1972

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

—George Washington, 1781

A woman should never be seen eating or drinking unless it be lobster salad and champagne, the only truly feminine and becoming viands.

—Lord Byron, 1812

How gloriously legible are the constellations of the heavens!

—Anthony Trollope, 1859

Life is a farce, and should not end with a mourning scene.

—Horace Walpole, 1784

Is it only the mouth and belly which are injured by hunger and thirst? Men’s minds are also injured by them.

—Mencius, 300 BC

To need to dominate others is to need others. The commander is dependent.

—Fernando Pessoa, c. 1935

If you find excrement somewhere in the village, the chief was the one who put it there.

—Congolese proverb

One’s friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.

—George Santayana, c. 1914

Some memories are like lucky charms, talismans, one shouldn’t tell about them or they’ll lose their power.

—Iris Murdoch, 1985

One should always have one’s boots on and be ready to leave.

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580

It is more blessed to give than to receive.

—Acts of the Apostles, c. 80

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.

—William Hazlitt, 1819