The poor man is ruined as soon as he begins to ape the rich.
—Publilius Syrus, c. 50 BC
Archive
Quotes
Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don’t know.
—Albert Camus, 1942The more laws, the more lawbreakers.
—Tao Te Ching, c. 500 BCFriend! It is a common word, often lightly used. Like other good and beautiful things, it may be tarnished by careless handling.
—Harriet Jacobs, 1861Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
—Mao Zedong, 1938After each night we are emptier: our mysteries and our griefs have leaked away into our dreams.
—E.M. Cioran, 1949Pictures made in childhood are painted in bright hues.
—Kate Douglas Wiggin, 1886Conjecturing a Climate
Of unsuspended Suns –
Adds poignancy to Winter
What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.
—Frederick Douglass, 1855Friends are ourselves.
—John Donne, 1603Put national causes first and personal grudges last.
—Sima Qian, c. 91 BCI never know quite when I’m not writing. Sometimes my wife comes up to me at a party and says, Dammit, Thurber, stop writing. She usually catches me in the middle of a paragraph. Or my daughter will look up from the dinner table and ask, Is he sick? No, my wife says, he’s writing something.
—James Thurber, 1955Life isn’t all beer and skittles, but beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form a good part of every Englishman’s education.
—Thomas Hughes, 1857