I cannot live without books, but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1815
Archive
Quotes
It is not a case we are treating; it is a living, palpitating, alas, too often suffering fellow creature.
—John Brown, 1904Friends are ourselves.
—John Donne, 1603The art of invention grows young with the things invented.
—Francis Bacon, 1605Keep away from physicians. It is all probing and guessing and pretending with them. They leave it to nature to cure in her own time, but they take the credit. As well as very fat fees.
—Anthony Burgess, 1964Till taught by pain, / Men really know not what good water’s worth.
—Lord Byron, 1819Communities do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.
—Benjamin Disraeli, 1863As the saying goes, an old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb.
—Chinua Achebe, 1958The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.
—Hermann Hesse, 1950One of the things men should most strive to do is win a good reputation and see that no one questions it.
—Juan Manuel, 1335The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.
—Sigmund Freud, 1912My ideas are clear. My orders are precise. Within five years, Rome must appear marvelous to all the people of the world—vast, orderly, powerful, as in the time of the empire of Augustus.
—Benito Mussolini, 1929Two things only the people anxiously desire, bread and the circus games.
—Juvenal, c. 121