Archive

Quotes

The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.

—Plato, c. 375 BC

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

—Samuel Johnson, 1780

What a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books; we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.

—Robert Burton, 1621

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

—Bertrand Russell, 1961

Writing cannot express words fully; words cannot express thoughts fully.

—The Book of Changes, c. 350 BC

In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.

—Voltaire, 1764

God never sent a messenger save with the language of his folk, that he might make the message clear for them.

—The Qur’an, c. 620

Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.

—Benjamin Franklin, c. 1732

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

—Søren Kierkegaard, 1843

Language is the archives of history.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844

Under all speech that is good for anything, there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as eternity; speech is shallow as time.

—Thomas Carlyle, 1838

The chief merit of language is clearness, and we know that nothing detracts so much from this as do unfamiliar terms.

—Galen, c. 175

I live by good soup, and not on fine language.

—Molière, 1672