Little folks become their little fate.
—Horace, c. 20 BC
Archive
Quotes
The men of today are born to criticize; of Achilles they see only the heel.
—Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, 1880Friends are fictions founded on some single momentary experience.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1864Only the little people pay taxes.
—Leona Helmsley, 1989When night in her rusty dungeon has imprisoned our eyesight, and that we are shut separately in our chambers from resort, the devil keeps his audit in our sin-guilty consciences.
—Thomas Nashe, 1594Let the French but have England, and they won’t want to conquer it.
—Horace Walpole, 1745Happy is the man who hath never known what it is to taste of fame—to have it is a purgatory, to want it is a hell!
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1843A bad reputation is easy to come by, painful to bear, and difficult to clear.
—Hesiod, c. 700 BCLife is the art of being well deceived.
—William Hazlitt, c. 1817There is a sickness among tyrants: they cannot trust their friends.
—Aeschylus, c. 458 BCThe self is like an infant: given free rein, it craves to suckle.
—al-Busiri, c. 1250Travel is like adultery: one is always tempted to be unfaithful to one’s own country. To have imagination is inevitably to be dissatisfied with where you live.
—Anatole Broyard, 1989I quit life as from an inn, not as from a home.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 44 BC