The gratitude is greater than the gift.
—Pierre Corneille, 1641
Archive
Quotes
When they shout “Long live progress,” always ask, “Progress of what?”
—Stanisław Jerzy Lec, 1957Guard more faithfully the secret which is confided to you than the money which is entrusted to your care.
—Isocrates, c. 370 BCAn electoral choice of ten different fascists is like choosing which way one wishes to die.
—George Jackson, 1971Do not lessen the time of following desire, for the wasting of time is an abomination to the spirit.
—Ptahhotep, c. 2350 BCThe Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education. School is where you go between when your parents can’t take you and industry can’t take you.
—John Updike, 1963The mind is not, I know, a highway but a temple, and its doors should not be carelessly left open.
—Margaret Fuller, 1844Happiness is no laughing matter.
—Richard Whately, 1843The day unravels what the night has woven.
—Walter Benjamin, 1929I have a terrible memory; I never forget a thing.
—Edith Konecky, 1976One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.
—E.B. White, 1958The ceaseless, senseless demand for original scholarship in a number of fields, where only erudition is now possible, has led either to sheer irrelevancy, the famous knowing of more and more about less and less, or to the development of a pseudo-scholarship which actually destroys its object.
—Hannah Arendt, 1972Disease makes men more physical, it leaves them nothing but body.
—Thomas Mann, 1924