I take it as a prime cause of the present confusion of society that it is too sickly and too doubtful to use pleasure frankly as a test of value.
—Rebecca West, 1939
Archive
Quotes
The righteous know the needs of their animals, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel.
—Book of Proverbs, c. 500 BCI used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.
—Mitch Hedberg, 1999The future, like everything else, is no longer quite what it used to be.
—Paul Valéry, 1931No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes.
—Hannah Arendt, 1963Everyone else is represented in Washington by a rich and powerful lobby, it seems. But there is no lobby for the people.
—Shirley Chisholm, 1970There are truths that prove their discoverers witless.
—Karl Kraus, 1909Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1735To 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 BCEvery thought is, strictly speaking, an afterthought.
—Hannah Arendt, 1978The power which the sea requires in the sailor makes a man of him very fast, and the change of shores and population clears his head of much nonsense of his wigwam.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1870Happiness does not dwell in herds, nor yet in gold.
—Democritus, c. 420 BCFrance has neither winter, summer, nor morals—apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.
—Mark Twain, 1879