Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.
—Honoré de Balzac, 1847
Archive
Quotes
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.
—Genesis, c. 900 BCThere is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.
—Frederick Douglass, 1855Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.
—Alexander Pope, 1738It is hard when nature does not respect your intentions, and she never does exactly respect them.
—Wendell Berry, 1985These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession.
—Claude Monet, 1908One should always have one’s boots on and be ready to leave.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.
—David Foster Wallace, 2000How like to us is that filthy beast the ape.
—Cicero, 45 BCDisobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made—through disobedience and through rebellion.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891All revolutions devour their own children.
—Ernst Röhm, 1933Ocean. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man—who has no gills.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906