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
Archive
Quotes
I had rather be in a state of misery and envied for my supposed happiness than in a state of happiness and pitied for my supposed misery.
—Elizabeth Inchbald, 1793Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self; for what we wish, that we readily believe.
—Demosthenes, 349 BCNot 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, 1884A dog starved at his master’s gate / Predicts the ruin of the state.
—William Blake, 1807Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.
—Frank Zappa, 1989No law is sufficiently convenient to all.
—Roman proverbYou shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.
—Joseph Conrad, 1900Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.
We want a lot of engineers in the modern world, but we do not want a world of engineers.
—Winston Churchill, 1948To live outside the law you must be honest.
—Bob Dylan, 1966It is the little causes, long continued, which are considered as bringing about the greatest changes of the earth.
—James Hutton, 1795The chief merit of language is clearness, and we know that nothing detracts so much from this as do unfamiliar terms.
—Galen, c. 175