To put one’s trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it.
—Samuel Butler, c. 1890
Archive
Quotes
A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.
—Herman Melville, 1851An exile with no home anywhere is a corpse without a grave.
—Publilius Syrus, 50 BCEven diseases have lost their prestige, there aren’t so many of them left.
—Louis-Ferdinand Céline, 1960In the country gossip is a pastime; in the city it is a warfare.
—W.M.L. Jay, 1870What water gives, water takes away.
—Portuguese proverbThere is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.
—Thomas Jefferson, 1790Worry over what has not occurred is a serious malady.
—Solomon ibn Gabirol, 1050The more men are massed together, the more corrupt they become. Disease and vice are the sure results of overcrowded cities.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762Time robs us of all, even of memory.
—Virgil, c. 40 BCEvery fool becomes a philosopher after ten days of rain.
—Clover Adams, 1882Money is mourned with deeper sorrow than friends or kindred.
—Juvenal, 128The elephant, although a gross beast, is yet the most decent and most sensible of any other upon earth. Although he never changes his female, and hath so tender a love for her whom he hath chosen, yet he never couples with her but at the end of every three years, and then only for the space of five days.
—St. Francis de Sales, 1609