Be courteous to all but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.
—George Washington, 1783
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Quotes
Ocean. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man—who has no gills.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1787The earth is beautiful and bright and kindly, but that is not all. The earth is also terrible and dark and cruel.
—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1970Today’s friend may be tomorrow’s foe.
—Sophocles, 440 BCLet the people think they govern, and they will be governed.
—William Penn, 1693Every gift has a personality—that of its giver.
—Nuruddin Farah, 1992In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.
—Herodotus, 440 BCI am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young. That’s what sitting on your ass does to your face.
—Leonard Cohen, 1970I never yet could make out why men are so fond of hunting; they often hurt themselves, often spoil good horses, and tear up the fields—and all for a hare or a fox or a stag that they could get more easily some other way.
—Anna Sewell, 1877Understanding is a very dull occupation.
—Gertrude Stein, 1937As far as I can see, the history of experimental art in the twentieth century is intimately bound up with the experience of intoxification.
—Will Self, 1994I do not mean to call an elephant a vulgar animal, but if you think about him carefully, you will find that his nonvulgarity consists in such gentleness as is possible to elephantine nature—not in his insensitive hide, nor in his clumsy foot, but in the way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way; and in his sensitive trunk, and still more sensitive mind, and capability of pique on points of honor.
—John Ruskin, 1860