An ugly sight, a man who’s afraid.
—Jean Anouilh, 1944
Archive
Quotes
Friendship’s a noble name, ’tis love refined.
—Susanna Centlivre, 1703Reality is always the foe of famous names.
—Petrarch, 1337This is not a clash between civilizations. It is a clash about civilization.
—Tony Blair, 2006Good fortune turns aside destruction by a great god.
—Instructions of Ankhsheshonqy, c. 100 BCThe ceaseless, senseless demand for original scholarship in a number of fields, where only erudition is now possible, has led either to sheer irrelevancy, the famous knowing of more and more about less and less, or to the development of a pseudo-scholarship which actually destroys its object.
—Hannah Arendt, 1972Those who give the first shock to a state are the first overwhelmed in its ruin; the fruits of public commotion are seldom enjoyed by him who was the first mover; he only beats the water for another’s net.
—Michel de Montaigne, 1580The whole secret of fencing consists but in two things, to give and not to receive.
—Molière, 1670No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes.
—Hannah Arendt, 1963Insurgents are like conquerors: they must go forward; the moment they are stopped, they are lost.
—Duke of Wellington, c. 1819Children and fools cannot lie.
—John Heywood, 1546Some memories are like lucky charms, talismans, one shouldn’t tell about them or they’ll lose their power.
—Iris Murdoch, 1985A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.
—Charles Baudelaire, 1852