What can you conceive more silly and extravagant than to suppose a man racking his brains and studying night and day how to fly?
—William Law, 1728
Archive
Quotes
Egypt was the mother of magicians.
—Clement of Alexandria, c. 200I have been a stranger here in my own land all my life.
—Sophocles, c. 441 BCMoney speaks sense in a language all nations understand.
—Aphra Behn, 1677Show me someone who never gossips, and I’ll show you someone who isn’t interested in people.
—Barbara Walters, 1975In most cases men willingly believe what they wish.
—Julius Caesar, 52 BCPatriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.
—Denis Diderot, 1774Man is no man, but a wolf, to a stranger.
—Plautus, c. 200 BCA government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.
—George Bernard Shaw, 1944Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.
—George Orwell, 1944Drugs, cataplasms, and whiskey are stupid substitutes for the dignity and potency of divine mind and its efficacy to heal.
—Mary Baker Eddy, 1908Music sweeps by me as a messenger / Carrying a message that is not for me.
—George Eliot, 1868Envy is the basis of democracy.
—Bertrand Russell, 1930