Archive

Quotes

He knows the water best who has waded through it.

—Danish proverb

Brains are the only things worth having in this world.

—L. Frank Baum, 1899

We seek with our human hands to create a second nature in the natural world.

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 45 BC

Those who give the first shock to a state are the first overwhelmed in its ruin; the fruits of public commotion are seldom enjoyed by him who was the first mover; he only beats the water for another’s net.

—Michel de Montaigne, 1580

Like a broken gong be still, be silent. Know the stillness of freedom where there is no more striving.

—Siddhartha Gautama, c. 500 BC

We are able to find everything in our memory, which is like a dispensary or chemical laboratory in which chance steers our hand sometimes to a soothing drug and sometimes to a dangerous poison.

—Marcel Proust, c. 1922

What reason weaves, by passion is undone.

—Alexander Pope, 1972

Style is the image of character.

—Edward Gibbon, c. 1789

Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.

—William Blake, c. 1803

Money, not morality, is the principle of commercial nations.

—Thomas Jefferson

I’m doomed to die, right? Why should I care if I go to Hades either with gout in my leg or a runner’s grace? Plenty of people will carry me there.

—Nicharchus, c. 90

Is this dying? Is this all? Is this all that I feared when I prayed against a hard death? Oh, I can bear this! I can bear it!

—Cotton Mather, 1728

A dissolute and intemperate youth hands down the body to old age in a worn-out state.

—Cicero, 44 BC