At night comes counsel to the wise.
—Menander, c. 300 BC
Archive
Quotes
Nature is immovable.
—Euripides, c. 415 BCThe most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.
—Herodotus, c. 425 BCTo be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel that discernment is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion—a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge. One may have that condition by fits only.
—George Eliot, c. 1872God 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, 1913Happiness does not dwell in herds, nor yet in gold.
—Democritus, c. 420 BCIn Washington, the first thing people tell you is what their job is. In Los Angeles you learn their star sign. In Houston you’re told how rich they are. And in New York they tell you what their rent is.
—Simon Hoggart, 1990To put one’s trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1890In most cases men willingly believe what they wish.
—Julius Caesar, 52 BCEnergy is the power that drives every human being. It is not lost by exertion but maintained by it, for it is a faculty of the psyche.
—Germaine Greer, 1970Despotism subjects a nation to one tyrant—democracy to many.
—Marguerite Gardiner, 1839He who would have clear water should go to the fountainhead.
—Italian proverbThe ability to store our data externally helps us imagine that our time is limitless, our space infinite.
—Carina Chocano, 2012