Archive

Quotes

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

—Voltaire, 1764

Plagues are as certain as death and taxes.

—Richard Krause, 1982

The sadness of the end of a career of an older athlete, with the betrayal of his body, is mirrored in the rest of us. Consciously or not, we know: there, soon, go I.

—Ira Berkow, 1987

Youth, youth, springtime of beauty.

—Anthem of the National Fascist Party, c. 1924

I have often been convinced that a democracy is incapable of empire.

—Thucydides, c. 404 BC

One’s friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.

—George Santayana, c. 1914

One need merely visit the marketplace and the graveyard to determine whether a city is in both physical and metaphysical order.

—Ernst Jünger, 1977

The slander of some people is as great a recommendation as the praise of others.

—Henry Fielding, 1730

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

—Anthony Burgess, 1972

The purest joy is to live without disguise, unconstrained by the ties of a grave reputation.

—Al-Hariri, c. 1108

Appearances often are deceiving.

—Aesop, c. 550 BC

Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.

—E.M. Forster, 1951

I have always found it in mine own experience an easier matter to devise many and profitable inventions than to dispose of one of them to the good of the author himself.

—Hugh Plat, 1595