Thou art not to learn the humors and tricks of that old bald cheater, time.
—Ben Jonson, 1601
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Quotes
Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.
—H.L. Mencken, 1919’Tis the sport to have the engineer / Hoist with his own petard.
—William Shakespeare, c. 1600Men have written in the most convincing manner to prove that death is no evil, and this opinion has been confirmed on a thousand celebrated occasions by the weakest of men as well as by heroes. Even so I doubt whether any sensible person has ever believed it, and the trouble men take to convince others as well as themselves that they do shows clearly that it is no easy undertaking.
—La Rochefoucauld, 1665Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891There are places one comes home to that one has never been to.
—Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, 1989It’s only the futility of the first flood that prevents God from sending a second.
—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas Chamfort, c. 1794In the name of Hippocrates doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival.
—Luis Buñuel, 1983The believer in magic and miracles reflects on how to impose a law on nature—and, in brief, the religious cult is the outcome of this reflection.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1878The Church says that the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in the shadow than in the Church.
—Ferdinand Magellan, c. 1510The mind is led on, step by step, to defeat its own logic.
—Dai Vernon, 1994The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease.
—Marianne Moore, 1935Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.
—W. Somerset Maugham, 1896