The belly is the teacher of the arts and bestower of invention.
—Persius, c. 55Quotes
Avoid the law—the first loss is generally the least.
—Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee, 1844The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.
—George Santayana, 1905Inventions that are not made, like babies that are not born, are rarely missed.
—John Kenneth Galbraith, 1958The bathing was so delightful this morning, and Molly so pressing with me to enjoy myself, that I believe I stayed in rather too long, as since the middle of the day I have felt unreasonably tired. I shall be more careful another time, and shall not bathe tomorrow as I had before intended.
—Jane Austen, 1804I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.
—John Maynard Keynes, 1917I am a man: I consider nothing human alien to me.
—Terence, 163 BCI’m afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.
—Aldous Huxley, 1925The sea serves the pirate as well as the trader.
—Prudentius, c. 405Men, my dear, are very queer animals—a mixture of horse nervousness, ass stubbornness, and camel malice.
—T. H. Huxley, 1895The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1787Revenge may be wicked, but it’s natural.
—William Makepeace Thackeray, 1847In the society of men, the truth resides now less in what things are than in what they are not. Our social realities are so ugly if seen in the light of exiled truth, and beauty is almost no longer possible if it is not a lie.
—R.D. Laing, 1967