No poems can please long, nor live, that are written by water drinkers.
—Horace, 35 BC
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Quotes
If the heavens were all parchment, and the trees of the forest all pens, and every human being were a scribe, it would still be impossible to record all that I have learned from my teachers.
—Jochanan ben Zakkai, c. 75He that serves God for money will serve the Devil for better wages.
—Roger L’Estrange, 1692Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
—E.B. White, 1944The various modes of religion which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true, by the philosophers equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful.
—Edward Gibbon, 1776A merchant shall hardly keep himself from doing wrong.
—Ecclesiasticus, c. 180 BCIf you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.
—Margaret Atwood, 2005The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.
—John Nance Garner, c. 1967Friendship was given by nature to be an assistant to virtue, not a companion to vice.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, c. 45 BCAnimals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
—George Eliot, 1857The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.
—Edward VIII, 1957A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in / A minute to smile and an hour to weep in.
—Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1895All progress is based upon a universal, innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1890