Archive

Quotes

Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.

—William Morris, 1882

To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance.

—Jean Genet, 1949

Of all the creatures that breathe and creep on the surface of the earth, none is more to be pitied than man.

—Homer, c. 750 BC

A bad reputation is easy to come by, painful to bear, and difficult to clear.

—Hesiod, c. 700 BC

No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.

—Cyril Connolly, 1944

The fox knows lots of tricks, the hedgehog only one—but it’s a winner.

—Archilochus, c. 650 BC

To ensure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough; a police force is needed as well.

—Albert Camus, 1951

Inventor, n. A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers, and springs and believes it civilization.

—Ambrose Bierce, 1911

All the daughters of music shall be brought low.

—Ecclesiastes, c. 400 BC

I am not Athenian or Greek but a citizen of the world.

—Socrates, c. 420 BC

Knowledge itself is power.

—Francis Bacon, 1597

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

—Jonathan Swift, 1706

As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.

—Pope John Paul II, 1986