To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891
Archive
Quotes
The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
—Saint Augustine, c. 390Jazz is the result of the energy stored up in America.
—George Gershwin, 1933Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.
—Jane Austen, 1815The first duty of a good inquisitor is to suspect especially those who seem sincere to him.
—Umberto Eco, 1980Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent.
—Louis Brandeis, 1928A criminal may improve and become a decent member of society. A foreigner cannot improve. Once a foreigner, always a foreigner. There is no way out for him.
—George Mikes, 1946I have always been of the mind that in a democracy, manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie knife.
—James Russell Lowell, 1873Anyone who has passed through the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape.
—William Hazlitt, 1821I am weary of friends, and friendships are all monsters.
—Jonathan Swift, 1710Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
—Gore Vidal, 1981One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
—Elbert Hubbard, 1911My people and I have come to an agreement that satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please.
—Frederick the Great, c. 1770