It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mold, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.
—Edward Gibbon, c. 1790
Archive
Quotes
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. 1790Most vegetarians I ever saw looked enough like their food to be classed as cannibals.
—Finley Peter Dunne, 1900Never make a defense or apology before you be accused.
—Charles I, 1636One must love people a good deal whom one takes pains to convince or instruct.
—Mary de la Riviere Manley, 1720We are a commercial people. We cannot boast of our arts, our crafts, our cultivation; our boast is in the wealth we produce.
—Ida M. Tarbell, 1904Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.
—Honoré de Balzac, 1847Egypt was the mother of magicians.
—Clement of Alexandria, c. 200Thanks be to God: since my leaving drinking of wine, I do find myself much better and do mind my business better, and do spend less money, and less time lost in idle company.
—Samuel Pepys, 1662If it were not for the intellectual snobs who pay in solid cash—the tribute which philistinism owes to culture, the arts would perish with their starving practitioners. Let us thank heaven for hypocrisy.
—Aldous Huxley, 1926Commerce tends to wear off those prejudices which maintain distinction and animosity between nations.
—William Robertson, 1769One need merely visit the marketplace and the graveyard to determine whether a city is in both physical and metaphysical order.
—Ernst Jünger, 1977Any man could, if he were so inclined, be the sculptor of his own brain.
—Santiago Ramón y Cajal, 1897