When poets don’t know what to say and have completely given up on the play, just like a finger, they lift the machine and the spectators are satisfied.
—Antiphanes, c. 350 BC
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Quotes
The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891Punishment is a sort of medicine.
—Aristotle, c. 340 BCMuch money makes a country poor, for it sets a dearer price on every thing.
—George Herbert, 1640I mean, why on earth (outside sickness and hangovers) aren’t people continually drunk? I want ecstasy of the mind all the time.
—Jack Kerouac, 1957The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.
—Sigmund Freud, 1912There’s folks ’ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away the water.
—George Eliot, 1859There be beasts that, at a year old, observe more, and pursue that which is for their good more prudently, than a child can do at ten.
—Thomas Hobbes, 1651A maid that laughs is half taken.
—John Ray, 1670A dissolute and intemperate youth hands down the body to old age in a worn-out state.
—Cicero, 44 BCReading is learning, but applying is also learning and the more important kind of learning at that.
—Mao Zedong, 1936Do you suppose that will change the sense of the morals, the fact that we can’t use morals as a means of judging the city because we couldn’t stand it? And that we’re changing our whole moral system to suit the fact that we’re living in a ridiculous way?
—Philip Johnson, 1965Oh, democracy! Whither are you leading us?
—Aristophanes, 414 BC