You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.
—Billie Holiday, 1956
Archive
Quotes
Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.
—Alexander Hamilton, 1787Children are all foreigners. We treat them as such.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1839It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street.
—Mary Lease, c. 1890It is wretched business to be digging a well just as you’re dying of thirst.
—Plautus, c. 193 BCThere is no greater disaster than not to know contentment.
—Laozi, c. 550 BCI find the pain of a little censure, even when it is unfounded, is more acute than the pleasure of much praise.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1789He who dies of epidemic disease is a martyr.
—Muhammad, c. 630It is noble to die before doing anything that deserves death.
—Anaxandrides, c. 376If a parricide is more wicked than anyone who commits homicide—because he kills not merely a man but a near relative—without doubt worse still is he who kills himself, because there is none nearer to a man than himself.
—Saint Augustine, c. 420Gambling is the child of avarice, the brother of iniquity, and the father of mischief.
—George Washington, 1783I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.
—Samuel Johnson, 1773A sick child is always the mother’s property; her own feelings generally make it so.
—Jane Austen, 1816