The winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
—Edward Gibbon, 1788
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Quotes
How like to us is that filthy beast the ape.
—Cicero, 45 BCIf a king loves music, there is little wrong in the land.
—Mencius, c. 330 BCI’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.
—Margaret Atwood, 1976The belly is the reason why man does not mistake himself for a god.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1886Friendship’s a noble name, ’tis love refined.
—Susanna Centlivre, 1703To endeavor to forget anyone is a certain way of thinking of nothing else.
—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it.
—Laurence Sterne, 1760Today’s city is the most vulnerable social structure ever conceived by man.
—Martin Oppenheimer, 1969What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.
—Erasmus, 1515All the world is topsy-turvy, and it has been topsy-turvy ever since the plague.
—Jack London, 1912The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.
—Dean Acheson, 1970I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king.
—Elizabeth I, 1588