Archive

Quotes

Rivalry is the whetstone of talent.

—Roman proverb

What harm is there in getting knowledge and learning, were it from a sot, a pot, a fool, a winter mitten, or an old slipper? 

—François Rabelais, 1533

It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mold, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.

—Edward Gibbon, c. 1790

Who draws his sword against his prince must throw away the scabbard.

—James Howell, 1659

The more laws, the more lawbreakers.

—Tao Te Ching, c. 500 BC

If my books had been any worse I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better I should not have come.

—Raymond Chandler, 1945

Repetition is the mother of education.

—Jean Paul, 1807

Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy.

—Alexander Hamilton, 1787

We must not always talk in the marketplace of what happens to us in the forest.

—Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850

Men were born to lie, and women to believe them.

—John Gay, 1728

In life our absent friend is far away: / But death may bring our friend exceeding near.

—Christina Rossetti, 1881

It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter.

—Lewis Strauss, 1954

Fame is but the empty noise of madmen.

—Epictetus, c. 100