Time, when it is left to itself and no definite demands are made on it, cannot be trusted to move at any recognized pace. Usually it loiters, but just when one has come to count upon its slowness, it may suddenly break into a wild irrational gallop.
—Edith Wharton, 1905Quotes
Most new discoveries are suddenly-seen things that were always there.
—Susanne K. Langer, 1942I doubt that we have any right to pity the dead for their own sakes.
—Lord Byron, 1817If there was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is now engaged.
—Thomas Paine, 1778I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1816The appointed thing comes at the appointed time in the appointed way.
—Myrtle Reed, 1910In tampering with the earth, we tamper with a mystery.
—Jonathan Schell, 2000Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.
—E.B. White, 1944Anyone who has a child should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he’ll escape.
—W.H. Auden, 1947What is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 46 BCNothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 63 BCI am leaving the town to the invaders: increasingly numerous, mediocre, dirty, badly behaved, shameless tourists.
—Brigitte Bardot, 1989Thought depends absolutely on the stomach, but in spite of that, those who have the best stomachs are not the best thinkers.
—Voltaire, 1770