Archive

Quotes

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

—Oscar Wilde, 1891

There is no blindness more insidious, more fatal, than this race for profit.

—Helen Keller, 1928

Every gift has a personality—that of its giver.

—Nuruddin Farah, 1992

Just to fill the hour—that is happiness.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844

Anyone who doesn’t know foreign languages knows nothing of his own.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1821

No lyric poems live long or please many people which are written by drinkers of water.

—Horace, 20 BC

Feasts must be solemn and rare, or else they cease to be feasts. 

—Aldous Huxley, 1929

What keeps the democracy alive at all but the hatred of excellence, the desire of the base to see no head higher than their own?

—Mary Renault, 1956

He who laugheth too much, hath the nature of a fool; he that laugheth not at all, hath the nature of an old cat.

—Thomas Fuller, 1732

The god of music dwelleth out of doors.

—Edith M. Thomas, 1887

A merchant shall hardly keep himself from doing wrong.

—Ecclesiasticus, c. 180 BC

There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching toward him and to be able to recognize or at least classify it. Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange.

—Elias Canetti, 1960

I find the pain of a little censure, even when it is unfounded, is more acute than the pleasure of much praise.

—Thomas Jefferson, 1789