Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
—Theodore Roosevelt, 1903
Archive
Quotes
History is a people’s memory, and without a memory man is demoted to the level of the lower animals.
—Malcolm X, 1964Commerce tends to wear off those prejudices which maintain distinction and animosity between nations.
—William Robertson, 1769The first requisite to happiness is that a man be born in a famous city.
—Euripides, c. 415 BCHealth can make money, but money cannot make health.
—Maria Edgeworth, 1833I curse the night, yet doth from day me hide.
—William Drummond, 1616It would be impossible to live for a year without disaster unless one practiced character-reading.
—Virginia Woolf, 1924I think that to get under the surface and really appreciate the beauty of any country, one has to go there poor.
—Grace Moore, 1944I wants to make your flesh creep.
—Charles Dickens, 1837Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you, because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.
—Roald Dahl, 1990I’ve got some shit I’m conservative about and some shit I’m liberal about. Crime—I’m conservative. Prostitution—I’m liberal.
—Chris Rock, 2008The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy, and temperamental: it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chawing a hunk of melon in the dust.
—Elizabeth Bowen, 1955Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.
—W.H. Auden, c. 1940