To blow and to swallow at the same time is not easy; I cannot at the same time be here and also there.
—Plautus, c. 200 BC
Archive
Quotes
If law and justice do not attain their ends, the people will be unable to move hand or foot.
—Confucius, c. 500There is not so contemptible a plant or animal that does not confound the most enlarged understanding.
—John Locke, 1689God is alive. Magic is afoot.
—Leonard Cohen, 1966Let us make our own mistakes, but let us take comfort in the knowledge that they are our own mistakes.
—Tom Mboya, 1958Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.
—Agnes Repplier, 1916Years are nothing to me—they should be nothing to you. Who asked you to count them or to consider them? In the world of wild nature, time is measured by seasons only—the bird does not know how old it is—the rose tree does not count its birthdays!
—Marie Corelli, 1911While gossip among women is universally ridiculed as low and trivial, gossip among men, especially if it is about women, is called theory, or idea, or fact.
—Andrea Dworkin, 1983I take it as a prime cause of the present confusion of society that it is too sickly and too doubtful to use pleasure frankly as a test of value.
—Rebecca West, 1939Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 63 BCHe who laugheth too much, hath the nature of a fool; he that laugheth not at all, hath the nature of an old cat.
—Thomas Fuller, 1732I always think of nature as a great spectacle, somewhat resembling the opera.
—Bernard de Fontenelle, 1686After each night we are emptier: our mysteries and our griefs have leaked away into our dreams.
—E.M. Cioran, 1949