To think ill of mankind, and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.
—William Hazlitt, 1823
Archive
Quotes
The righteous know the needs of their animals, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel.
—Book of Proverbs, c. 500 BCIt is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.
—Friedrich Schiller, 1781Tell us your phobias and we will tell you what you are afraid of.
—Robert Benchley, 1935The mind is led on, step by step, to defeat its own logic.
—Dai Vernon, 1994The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.
—Tacitus, c. 117The great difficulty lies in trying to transpose last night’s moment to a day which has no knowledge of it.
—Zora Neale Hurston, 1942Technology is so much fun, but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge.
—Daniel Boorstin, 1978The world is made of the very stuff of the body.
—Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 1961The less intelligent the white man is, the more stupid he thinks the black.
—André Gide, 1927Do not ask me to be kind; just ask me to act as though I were.
—Jules Renard, 1898Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.
—Voltaire, 1769Tomorrow we take to the mighty sea.
—Horace, 23 BC