The fear of the Lord is true wisdom, and he who hath it not can in no way penetrate the true secrets of magic.
—Abraham the Jew, c. 1400
Archive
Quotes
There are some who, if a cat accidentally comes into the room, though they neither see it nor are told of it, will presently be in a sweat and ready to die away.
—Increase Mather, 1684I wonder whether if I had an education I should have been more or less a fool than I am.
—Alice James, 1889A college degree is a social certificate, not a proof of competence.
—Elbert Hubbard, 1911God is a complex of ideas formed by the tribe, the nation, and humanity, which awake and organize social feelings and aim to link the individual to society and to bridle the zoological individualism.
—Maxim Gorky, 1913The chief merit of language is clearness, and we know that nothing detracts so much from this as do unfamiliar terms.
—Galen, c. 175The young man must store up, the old man must use.
—Seneca the Younger, c. 63But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.
—Genesis, c. 900 BCThere is a kind of revolution of so general a character that it changes the mental tastes as well as the fortunes of the world.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1665See one promontory (said Socrates of old), one mountain, one sea, one river, and see all.
—Robert Burton, c. 1620Someone will remember us
I say
even in another time.
Water has many ways of reminding us that when we are in it we are out of our element.
—Christopher Hitchens, 2008Whatever the pace of this technological revolution may be, the direction is clear: the lower rungs of the economic ladder are being lopped off.
—Bayard Rustin, 1965