Wood burns because it has the proper stuff in it, and a man becomes famous because he has the proper stuff in him.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, c. 1790
Archive
Quotes
You can’t find the soul with a scalpel.
—Gustave Flaubert, c. 1880It is permitted to learn even from an enemy.
—Ovid, c. 8In every ill turn of fortune, the most unhappy sort of unfortunate man is the one who has been happy.
—Boethius, c. 520To hold a throne is luck; to bestow it, virtue.
—Seneca the Younger, c. 45Vox populi, vox humbug.
—William Tecumseh Sherman, 1863What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul.
—Joseph Addison, 1711If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in mourning coaches.
—Jonathan Swift, 1706Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
—E.M. Forster, 1951Journalists belong in the gutter, because that is where the ruling classes throw their guilty secrets.
—Gerald Priestland, 1988The traveler with nothing on him sings in the robber’s face.
—Juvenal, c. 125A whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
—Herman Melville, 1851I wonder whether if I had an education I should have been more or less a fool than I am.
—Alice James, 1889