Archive

Quotes

The sole business of a seaman onshore who has to go to sea again is to take as much pleasure as he can.

—Leigh Hunt, 1820

The chief merit of language is clearness, and we know that nothing detracts so much from this as do unfamiliar terms.

—Galen, c. 175

A broken friendship may be soldered but will never be sound.

—Thomas Fuller, 1732

Family! Thou art the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house-fathers, and a hell for children.

—August Strindberg, 1886

And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

—Walt Whitman, 1855

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

—Judge Learned Hand, 1944

Anyone who’s never watched somebody die is suffering from a pretty bad case of virginity.

—John Osborne, 1956

Quarreling must lead to disorder, and disorder exhaustion.

—Xunzi, c. 250 BC

We do not suffer by accident. 

—Jane Austen, 1813

Some memories are like lucky charms, talismans, one shouldn’t tell about them or they’ll lose their power.

—Iris Murdoch, 1985

Without virtue, both riches and honor, to me, seem like the passing cloud.

—Confucius, c. 350 BC

Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs only to the people who prepare for it today.

—Malcolm X, 1964

Fear is a poor guarantor of a long life.

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 44