What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1830
Archive
Quotes
The most fitting occupation for a civilized man is to do nothing.
—Théophile Gautier, c. 1835I have sometimes thought that the laws ought not to punish those actions of evil which are committed when the senses are steeped in intoxication.
—Walt Whitman, 1842Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands, and goes to work.
—Carl Sandburg, 1959After each night we are emptier: our mysteries and our griefs have leaked away into our dreams.
—E.M. Cioran, 1949Dreams have always been my friend, full of information, full of warnings.
—Doris Lessing, 1994Only the little people pay taxes.
—Leona Helmsley, 1989I never know quite when I’m not writing. Sometimes my wife comes up to me at a party and says, Dammit, Thurber, stop writing. She usually catches me in the middle of a paragraph. Or my daughter will look up from the dinner table and ask, Is he sick? No, my wife says, he’s writing something.
—James Thurber, 1955It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.
—Thomas Hardy, 1874I am dying with the help of too many physicians.
—Alexander the Great, c. 323 BCLaws, like houses, lean on one another.
—Edmund Burke, 1765Dance tunes are always right.
—Dylan Thomas, 1936People who’ve drunk neat wine don’t care a damn.
—Hipponax, c. 550 BC