Despotism subjects a nation to one tyrant—democracy to many.
—Marguerite Gardiner, 1839
Archive
Quotes
To put one’s trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1890Seafarers go to sleep in the evening not knowing whether they will find themselves at the bottom of the sea the next morning.
—Jean de Joinville, c. 1305Perish the universe, provided I have my revenge.
—Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac, 1654The only function of a school is to make self-education easier.
—Isaac Asimov, 1974These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession.
—Claude Monet, 1908Without doubt God is the universal moving force, but each being is moved according to the nature that God has given it. He directs angels, man, animals, brute matter, in sum all created things—but each according to its nature—and man having been created free, he is freely led. This rule is truly the eternal law and in it we must believe.
—Joseph de Maistre, 1821The history of the land has been written very largely in water.
—John Hodgdon Bradley Jr., 1935Health indeed is a precious thing, to recover and preserve which we undergo any misery, drink bitter potions, freely give our goods—restore a man to his health, his purse lies open to thee.
—Robert Burton, 1621One need merely visit the marketplace and the graveyard to determine whether a city is in both physical and metaphysical order.
—Ernst Jünger, 1977I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes.
—Maxine Hong Kingston, 1976How like to us is that filthy beast the ape.
—Cicero, 45 BCThe various modes of religion which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true, by the philosophers equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful.
—Edward Gibbon, 1776