One man’s loss is another man’s profit.
—Michel de Montaigne, c. 1580
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Quotes
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent.
—Louis Brandeis, 1928The ingrained idea that, because there is no king and they despise titles, the Americans are a free people is pathetically untrue.
—Margot Asquith, 1922Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.
A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast.
—The BibleThe only function of a school is to make self-education easier.
—Isaac Asimov, 1974The best way to fill time is to waste it.
—Marguerite Duras, 1987Water, thou hast no taste, no color, no odor; canst not be defined, art relished while ever mysterious.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1939The elephant, although a gross beast, is yet the most decent and most sensible of any other upon earth. Although he never changes his female, and hath so tender a love for her whom he hath chosen, yet he never couples with her but at the end of every three years, and then only for the space of five days.
—St. Francis de Sales, 1609All men naturally hate each other. We have used concupiscence as best we can to make it serve the common good, but this is mere sham and a false image of charity, for essentially it is just hate.
—Blaise Pascal, c. 1655What one knows is, in youth, of little moment; they know enough who know how to learn.
—Henry Adams, 1907Every adolescent has that dream every century has that dream every revolutionary has that dream, to destroy the family.
—Gertrude Stein, 1940What is food to one is to others bitter poison.
—Lucretius, 50 BC