To blow and to swallow at the same time is not easy; I cannot at the same time be here and also there.
—Plautus, c. 200 BC
Archive
Quotes
Seaward ho! Hang the treasure! It’s the glory of the sea that has turned my head.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1883To outwit an enemy is not only just and glorious but profitable and sweet.
—Plutarch, c. 100All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it.
—Henry David Thoreau, 1849To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the need for thought.
—Henri Poincaré, 1903To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.
—Walter Pater, 1873Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.
—Joseph Stalin, 1934The waters are nature’s storehouse, in which she locks up her wonders.
—Izaak Walton, 1653What is outside my mind means nothing to it.
—Marcus Aurelius, c. 170No one makes a revolution by himself, and there are some revolutions which humanity accomplishes without quite knowing how, because it is everybody who takes them in hand.
—George Sand, 1851Fire destroys that which feeds it.
—Simone Weil, c. 1940There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.
—Arthur Conan Doyle, 1891Drunkenness is the very sepulcher / Of man’s wit and his discretion.
—Geoffrey Chaucer, c. 1390