Even members of the nobility, let alone persons of no consequence, would do well not to have children.
—Yoshida Kenko, c. 1330
Archive
Quotes
Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.
—Charles de Gaulle, 1963Attend to earth,
for it is to earth that kings are truly wedded.
We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink, for dining alone is leading the life of a lion or wolf.
—Epicurus, c. 300 BCA true German can’t stand the French, / Yet willingly he drinks their wines.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1832Man is a tool-using animal. Nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.
—Thomas Carlyle, 1836The envious die not once, but as often as the envied win applause.
—Baltasar Gracián, 1647We get a deal o’ useless things about us, only because we’ve got the money to spend.
—George Eliot, 1860The first requisite to happiness is that a man be born in a famous city.
—Euripides, c. 415 BCHow absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.
—Søren Kierkegaard, 1843Those who know the joys and miseries of celebrities when they have passed the age of forty know how to defend themselves.
—Sarah Bernhardt, 1904Every adolescent has that dream every century has that dream every revolutionary has that dream, to destroy the family.
—Gertrude Stein, 1940Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906