The whole secret of fencing consists but in two things, to give and not to receive.
—Molière, 1670
Archive
Quotes
I’ve a grand memory for forgetting.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
—L.P. Hartley, 1953The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
—H.L. Mencken, 1921Man’s great mission is not to conquer nature by main force but to cooperate with her intelligently but lovingly for his own purposes.
—Lewis Mumford, 1962It is a luxury to be understood.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1831I have loved the stars too truly to be fearful of the night.
—Sarah Williams, 1868The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.
—Maya Angelou, 1986Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self; for what we wish, that we readily believe.
—Demosthenes, 349 BCDrive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
—William Blake, c. 1790You must not grow used to making money out of everything. One sees more people ruined than one has seen preserved by shameful gains.
—Sophocles, c. 442 BCMedication alone is not to be relied on. In one half the cases medicine is not needed, or is worse than useless. Obedience to spiritual and physical laws—hygiene of the body and hygiene of the spirit—is the surest warrant for health and happiness.
—Harriot K. Hunt, 1856Infectious disease is one of the few genuine adventures left in the world.
—Hans Zinsser, 1935