More pernicious nonsense was never devised by man than treaties of commerce.
—Benjamin Disraeli, 1880
Archive
Quotes
To lose confidence in one’s body is to lose confidence in oneself.
—Simone de Beauvoir, 1949Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave.
—Thomas Browne, 1658The decline of the aperitif may well be one of the most depressing phenomena of our time.
—Luis Buñuel, 1983Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
—W.H. Auden, 1957No wise man ever wished to be younger.
—Jonathan Swift, 1706When the physician said to him, “You have lived to be an old man,” he said, “That is because I never employed you as my physician.”
—Pausanias, c. 450 BCThose from whom we were born have long since departed, and those with whom we grew up exist only in memory. We, too, through the approach of death, become, as it were, trees growing on the sandy bank of a river.
—Bhartrihari, c. 400The best quarantine is hygiene.
—Richard D. Arnold, 1871Civilization, as we know it, is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor.
—Arnold Toynbee, 1948There is nothing worse for mortals than a wandering life.
—Homer, c. 750 BCWater its living strength first shows, / When obstacles its course oppose.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1815Exile lacks the grandeur, the majesty, of expatriation.
—Bharati Mukherjee, 1999