No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.
—Magna Carta, 1215
Archive
Quotes
All pain is one malady with many names.
—Antiphanes, c. 400 BCThe brain may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells with the body.
—Arthur Schopenhauer, 1851Everyone knows about everybody in Hollywood—who sleeps with whom, who doesn’t sleep, who does it standing on his head or in the dentist’s chair.
—Rock Hudson, 1982It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.
—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1515The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774To be too conscious is an illness—a real thoroughgoing illness.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1864Fear is the foundation of most governments.
—John Adams, 1776All the married heiresses I have known have shipwrecked.
—Benjamin Disraeli, 1880The country only has charms for those not obliged to stay there.
—Édouard Manet, c. 1860Religion is by no means a proper subject of conversation in mixed company.
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 1754Laughter almost ever cometh of things most disproportioned to ourselves and nature. Laughter hath only a scornful tickling.
—Philip Sidney, 1582Men have written in the most convincing manner to prove that death is no evil, and this opinion has been confirmed on a thousand celebrated occasions by the weakest of men as well as by heroes. Even so I doubt whether any sensible person has ever believed it, and the trouble men take to convince others as well as themselves that they do shows clearly that it is no easy undertaking.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1665