Archive

Quotes

Once a woman has lost her chastity she will shrink from nothing.

—Tacitus, c. 100

The happy ending is our national belief.

—Mary McCarthy, 1947

At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.

—Rose Macaulay, 1925

No families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1860

Freedom of the press is only guaranteed to those who own one.

—A.J. Liebling, 1960

There is a kind of revolution of so general a character that it changes the mental tastes as well as the fortunes of the world.

—La Rochefoucauld, 1665

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

—Shimon Peres, 1995

The hatred of relatives is the bitterest.

—Tacitus, 117

Death renders all equal.

—Claudian, c. 395

At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.

—W. Somerset Maugham, 1896

I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast, for I intend to go in harm’s way.

—John Paul Jones, 1778

Luck is believing you’re lucky. 

—William Carlos Williams, 1947

Luck takes the step that no one sees.

—Publilius Syrus, c. 50 BC