Archive

Quotes

Men are generally more pleased with a widespread than with a great reputation.

—Pliny the Younger, c. 110

To endeavor to forget anyone is a certain way of thinking of nothing else.

—Jean de La Bruyère, 1688

Nothing puzzles me more than time and space, and yet nothing puzzles me less, for I never think about them.

—Charles Lamb, 1810

None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.

—Pearl S. Buck, 1943

Man is no man, but a wolf, to a stranger.

—Plautus, c. 200 BC

The world began without man, and it will end without him.

—Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1955

There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy’s life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.

—Mark Twain, 1876

True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.

—Edith Wharton, 1924

The play is the tragedy “Man,” And its hero the conqueror worm.

—Edgar Allan Poe, 1843

I will never again command an army in America if we must carry along paid spies. I will banish myself to some foreign country first.

—William Tecumseh Sherman, 1863

Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave.

—Thomas Browne, 1658

How like to us is that filthy beast the ape.

—Cicero, 45 BC

There’s hope a great man’s memory may outlive his life half a year.

—William Shakespeare, c. 1600