He that would eat the nut must crack the shell.
—Plautus, c. 200 BC
Archive
Quotes
I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.
—Maximilien Robespierre, 1792I have learned much from disease which life could never have taught me anywhere else.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1830No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.
—Samuel Johnson, 1776The less a man knows about the past and the present, the more insecure must prove to be his judgment of the future.
—Sigmund Freud, 1927Everyone lives by selling something.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1892Can you draw sweet water from a foul well?
—Brooks Atkinson, 1940Avoid the law—the first loss is generally the least.
—Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee, 1844The Romans would never have found time to conquer the world if they had been obliged first to learn Latin.
—Heinrich Heine, 1827Some to the common pulpits, and cry out / “Liberty, freedom, and enfranchisement!”
—William Shakespeare, c. 1599The planet keeps to the astronomer’s timetable, but the wind still bloweth almost where it listeth.
—John Henry Poynting, 1899The only equals are those who are equally rich.
—Burundian proverbThere is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1943