Archive

Quotes

The best physician is he who can distinguish the possible from the impossible.

—Herophilus, c. 290 BC

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1921

I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.

—Samuel Butler, c. 1902

To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.

—Quentin Crisp, 1968

In the name of Hippocrates doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.

—Luis Buñuel, 1983

Of my friends, I am the only one I have left.

—Terence, 161 BC

What is food to one is to others bitter poison.

—Lucretius, 50 BC

Speech is the mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so is he.

—Publilius Syrus, c. 50 BC

Men are able to assist fortune but not to thwart her. They can weave her designs, but they cannot destroy them.

—Niccolò Machiavelli, 1531

A whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.

—Herman Melville, 1851

Every man has a lurking wish to appear considerable in his native place.

—Samuel Johnson, 1771

We die of comfort and by conflict live.

—May Sarton, 1953

I want to be the white man’s brother, not his brother-in-law.

—Martin Luther King Jr., 1962