Archive

Quotes

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

—Agnes Repplier, 1916

I have often been convinced that a democracy is incapable of empire.

—Thucydides, c. 404 BC

Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands, and goes to work.

—Carl Sandburg, 1959

Envy and hatred are apt to blind the eyes and render them unable to behold things as they are.

—Margaret of Valois, c. 1600

Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.

—William Blake, c. 1790

Drive out nature with a pitchfork, and she will always come back. 

—Horace, c. 25 BC

Don’t ever wear artistic jewelry; it wrecks a woman’s reputation.

—Colette, 1944

The young always have the same problem—how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their elders and copying one another.

—Quentin Crisp, 1968

Machines seem to sense that I am afraid of them. It makes them hostile.

—Sharyn McCrumb, 1990

No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens. 

—Abraham Lincoln

In every human breast, God has implanted a principle, which we call love of freedom; it is impatient of oppression and pants for deliverance.

—Phillis Wheatley, 1774

As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection.

—Charles Darwin, 1859

Every gift has a personality—that of its giver.

—Nuruddin Farah, 1992