I cannot but bless the memory of Julius Caesar, for the great esteem he expressed for fat men and his aversion to lean ones.
—David Hume, 1751
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Quotes
Youth is the time to go flashing from one end of the world to the other both in mind and body, to try the manners of different nations, to hear the chimes at midnight.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1881Is it a fact—or have I dreamed it—that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time?
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851To hold a throne is luck; to bestow it, virtue.
—Seneca the Younger, c. 45I had rather be in a state of misery and envied for my supposed happiness than in a state of happiness and pitied for my supposed misery.
—Elizabeth Inchbald, 1793In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1878Insurgents are like conquerors: they must go forward; the moment they are stopped, they are lost.
—Duke of Wellington, c. 1819The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to.
—Carl Sandburg, 1934The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.
—Edward O. Wilson, 2009A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.
—Martin Luther King Jr., c. 1967If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.
—Dorothy ParkerIt is hard when nature does not respect your intentions, and she never does exactly respect them.
—Wendell Berry, 1985The first duty of a good inquisitor is to suspect especially those who seem sincere to him.
—Umberto Eco, 1980