Time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it, cannot be trusted to move at any recognized pace. Usually it loiters, but just when one has come to count upon its slowness, it may suddenly break into a wild irrational gallop.
—Edith Wharton, 1905
Archive
Quotes
Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.
—Jeremy Bentham, c. 1832The chief merit of language is clearness, and we know that nothing detracts so much from this as do unfamiliar terms.
—Galen, c. 175Inventions that are not made, like babies that are not born, are rarely missed.
—John Kenneth Galbraith, 1958Understanding is a very dull occupation.
—Gertrude Stein, 1937The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.
—G.K. Chesterton, 1919The less a man knows about the past and the present, the more insecure must prove to be his judgment of the future.
—Sigmund Freud, 1927Emigration is easy, but immigration is something else. To flee, yes; but to be accepted?
—Victoria Wolff, 1943Life’s no resting, but a moving.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, c. 1795A change of fortune hurts a wise man no more than a change of the moon.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1732Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs only to the people who prepare for it today.
—Malcolm X, 1964I hate the sight of monkeys; they remind me so of poor relations.
—Henry Luttrell, 1820I love everyone now that I have gray hair.
—Polatkin, c. 1855