Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its brevity.
—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688
Archive
Quotes
Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
—Herman Melville, 1851The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.
—Plato, c. 375 BCSometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.
—Carl Sandburg, 1936True friendship withstands time, distance, and silence.
—Isabel Allende, 2000I have always been of the mind that in a democracy, manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie knife.
—James Russell Lowell, 1873Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.
—E.B. White, 1944A whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
—Herman Melville, 1851Epitaph, n. An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906Worldly fame is but a breath of wind that blows now this way, now that, and changes names as it changes in direction.
—Dante Alighieri, c. 1315Everyone who is sick is someone else’s patient zero.
—Leslie Jamison, 2020Happiness, whether in business or private life, leaves very little trace in history.
—Fernand Braudel, 1979Happiness is a warm puppy.
—Charles Schulz, 1971