Archive

Quotes

Spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of birdsong.

—Rachel Carson, 1962

The worship of opinion is, at this day, the established religion of the United States.

—Harriet Martineau, 1839

All things are filled full of signs, and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another.

—Plotinus, c. 255

Everything that deceives does so by casting a spell.

—Plato, c. 375 BC

What one man can invent another can discover.

—Arthur Conan Doyle, 1905

Thought depends absolutely on the stomach, but in spite of that, those who have the best stomachs are not the best thinkers.

—Voltaire, 1770

I know nothing about sex, because I was always married.

—Zsa Zsa Gabor

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.

—William Hazlitt, 1819

Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.

—William Empson, 1928

The poor man is ruined as soon as he begins to ape the rich.

—Publilius Syrus, c. 50 BC

He that commands the sea is at great liberty and may take as much and as little of the war as he will.

—Francis Bacon, c. 1600

Vox populi, vox humbug.

—William Tecumseh Sherman, 1863

Man punishes the action, but God the intention.

—Thomas Fuller, 1732