Archive

Quotes

The smell of rain is rich with life.

—Estela Portillo Trambley, 1975

Labor disgraces no man; unfortunately, you occasionally find men who disgrace labor.

—Ulysses S. Grant, 1877

In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: they must be fit for it; they must not do too much of it; and they must have a sense of success in it.

—John Ruskin, 1850

If the people be the governors, who shall be governed?

—John Cotton, c. 1636

Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.

—Agnes Repplier, 1916

Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.

—Henry David Thoreau, 1852

All the daughters of music shall be brought low.

—Ecclesiastes, c. 400 BC

A person who sees only fashion in fashion is a fool.

—Honoré de Balzac, 1830

I’ve seen the future, brother; it is murder.

—Leonard Cohen, 1992

Let us have peace, but let us have liberty, law, and justice first.

—Frederick Douglass, 1878

Fashion, n. A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.

—Ambrose Bierce, 1911

Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.

—William James, 1902

Why is a ship under sail more poetical than a hog in a high wind? The hog is all nature, the ship is all art.

—Lord Byron, 1821