A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.
—Jane Austen, 1814
Archive
Quotes
All attempts to adapt our ethical code to our situation in the technological age have failed.
—Max Born, 1968He who travels by sea is nothing but a worm on a piece of wood, a trifle in the midst of a powerful creation. The waters play about with him at will, and no one but God can help him.
—Muhammad as-Saffar, 1846How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do.
—William James, 1902Trade’s proud empire hastes to swift decay.
—Oliver Goldsmith, 1770Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
—Oscar Wilde, 1890All men naturally hate each other. We have used concupiscence as best we can to make it serve the common good, but this is mere sham and a false image of charity, for essentially it is just hate.
—Blaise Pascal, c. 1655What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.
—Henry David Thoreau, 1850Without doubt God is the universal moving force, but each being is moved according to the nature that God has given it. He directs angels, man, animals, brute matter, in sum all created things—but each according to its nature—and man having been created free, he is freely led. This rule is truly the eternal law and in it we must believe.
—Joseph de Maistre, 1821A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die!
—Philip Roth, 1969It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street.
—Mary Lease, c. 1890Revolutions never go backward.
—Thomas Skidmore, 1829And then, sir, there is this consideration: that if the abuse be enormous, nature will rise up and, claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system.
—Samuel Johnson, 1791