Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.
—Marlene Dietrich, 1962
Archive
Quotes
Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.
—Lucretius, c. 58 BCThere is no work of human hands which time does not wear away and reduce to dust.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 46 BCRevolutions are not made by men in spectacles.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1871Honest commerce is the great civilizer. We exchange ideas when we exchange fabrics.
—Robert G. Ingersoll, 1882A god cannot procure death for himself, even if he wished it, which, so numerous are the evils of life, has been granted to man as our chief good.
—Pliny the Elder, c. 77When night in her rusty dungeon has imprisoned our eyesight, and that we are shut separately in our chambers from resort, the devil keeps his audit in our sin-guilty consciences.
—Thomas Nashe, 1594I looked and there was a pale green horse! Its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed with him.
—Book of Revelations, c. 90Other nations use “force”; we Britons alone use “might.”
—Evelyn Waugh, 1938Everybody says it; and what everybody says must be true.
—James Fenimore Cooper, 1844A true German can’t stand the French, / Yet willingly he drinks their wines.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1832Curse on all laws but those which love has made.
—Alexander Pope, 1717Ashore it’s wine, women, and song; aboard it’s rum, bum, and concertina.
—British naval saying, c. 1800