I do not amuse myself by thinking of dead people.
—Napoleon Bonaparte, 1807
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Quotes
‘Tis a superstition to insist on a special diet. All is made at last of the same chemical atoms.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860Labor is no disgrace.
—Hesiod, c. 700 BCYou should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.
—Henrik Ibsen, 1882What 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, 1621When a man dies, and his kin are glad of it, they say, “He is better off.”
—Edgar Watson Howe, 1911If you are truly serious about preparing your child for the future, don’t teach him to subtract—teach him to deduct.
—Fran Lebowitz, 1981See one promontory (said Socrates of old), one mountain, one sea, one river, and see all.
—Robert Burton, c. 1620Let the young know they will never find a more interesting, more instructive book than the patient himself.
—Giorgio Baglivi, c. 1696The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which force of habit has made permanent.
—Marcel Proust, 1919An ape will be an ape, though clad in purple.
—Erasmus, 1511Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.
—Noël Coward, 1930To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.
—Quentin Crisp, 1968