It is not right for a ruler who has the nation in his charge, a man with so much on his mind, to sleep all night.
—Homer, c. 750 BC
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Quotes
You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.
—Mario Cuomo, 1985When the missionaries first came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, “Let us pray.” We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.
—Desmond Tutu, 1984Under the wide and starry sky, / Dig the grave and let me lie.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1887Every man is worth just so much as the things he busies himself with.
—Marcus Aurelius, c. 175Enemies are so stimulating.
—Katharine Hepburn, 1969On the loftiest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own rump.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
—Oscar Wilde, 1895Just as language no longer has anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connection with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.
—Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
—George Eliot, 1857I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. War is hell.
—William Tecumseh Sherman, 1879Men argue, nature acts.
—Voltaire, 1764Among famous traitors of history, one might mention the weather.
—Ilka Chase, 1969