Archive

Quotes

Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo.

—Matsuo Basho, c. 1685

Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so shall you come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1838

Plough deep while sluggards sleep.

—Benjamin Franklin, 1758

We possess art lest we perish of the truth.

—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1887

Epitaph, n. An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect.

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.

—Toni Morrison, 1987

Home is the girl’s prison and the woman’s workhouse.

—George Bernard Shaw, 1903

Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.

—Socrates, c. 430 BC

War has silenced all laws.

—Lucan, c. 65

It’s your business when your neighbor’s wall is in flames.

—Horace, 19 BC

What one man can invent another can discover.

—Arthur Conan Doyle, 1905

Speak without regard for the consequences, and it is too late for silence when disaster strikes.

—Huan Kuan, 81 BC

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

—Mao Zedong, 1938