Archive

Quotes

The period is not very remote when the benefits of a liberal and free commerce will, pretty generally, succeed to the devastations and horrors of war.

—George Washington, 1786

To know the abyss of the darkness and not to fear it, to entrust oneself to it and whatever may arise from it—what greater gift?

—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1975

Doing research on the web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly.

—Roger Ebert, 1998

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.

—Dorothy Parker

For, say they, when cruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner out of it, at least.

—Herman Melville, 1851

Drinking with women is as unnatural as scolding with ’em.

—William Wycherley, 1675

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.

—Samuel Butler, c. 1890

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules, and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence; in other words it is war minus the shooting.

—George Orwell, 1945

It is not my design to drink or sleep; my design is to make what haste I can to be gone.

—Oliver Cromwell, 1658

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844

Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don’t know. 

—Albert Camus, 1942

It is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear. 

—Charlotte Brontë, 1847

Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

—Benjamin Franklin, 1735