Archive

Quotes

The only evidence, so far as I know, about another life is, first, that we have no evidence; and, secondly, that we are rather sorry that we have not, and wish we had.

—Robert G. Ingersoll, 1879

No lyric poems live long or please many people which are written by drinkers of water.

—Horace, 20 BC

Water its living strength first shows, / When obstacles its course oppose.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1815

Scandal begins where the police leave off.

—Karl Kraus, 1909

The king times are fast finishing. There will be blood shed like water, and tears like mist; but the peoples will conquer in the end.

—Lord Byron, 1821

Good or ill fortune is very little at our disposal.

—David Hume, 1742

One must love people a good deal whom one takes pains to convince or instruct.

—Mary de la Riviere Manley, 1720

I wonder whether if I had an education I should have been more or less a fool than I am. 

—Alice James, 1889

I have been a stranger here in my own land all my life.

—Sophocles, c. 441 BC

When we see a natural style we are quite amazed and delighted, because we expected to see an author and find a man.

—Blaise Pascal, c. 1657

Not a change for the better in our human housekeeping has ever taken place that wise and good men have not opposed it—have not prophesied that the world would wake up to find its throat cut in consequence.

—James Russell Lowell, 1884

Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1871

People who’ve drunk neat wine don’t care a damn.

—Hipponax, c. 550 BC