Slang is as old as speech and the congregating together of people in cities. It is the result of crowding and excitement and artificial life.
—John Camden Hotten, 1859
Archive
Quotes
Sex: in America, an obsession; in other parts of the world, a fact.
—Marlene Dietrich, 1962The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship.
—Winston Churchill, 1943I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?
—Lord Byron, 1813The sea yields action to the body, meditation to the mind, the world to the world, all parts thereof to each part, by this art of arts—navigation.
—Samuel Purchas, 1613Drunkenness is the very sepulcher / Of man’s wit and his discretion.
—Geoffrey Chaucer, c. 1390Few sons are equal to their fathers; most fall short, all too few surpass them.
—Homer, c. 750 BCWater is the first principle of everything.
—Thales of Miletus, c. 600 BCOnce any group in society stands in a relatively deprived position in relation to other groups, it is genuinely deprived.
—Margaret Mead, 1972A joke is at most a temporary rebellion against virtue, and its aim is not to degrade the human being but to remind him that he is already degraded.
—George Orwell, 1945Every gift has a personality—that of its giver.
—Nuruddin Farah, 1992Egypt was the mother of magicians.
—Clement of Alexandria, c. 200Disease is not of the body but of the place.
—Latin proverb