The Romans would never have found time to conquer the world if they had been obliged first to learn Latin.
—Heinrich Heine, 1827
Archive
Quotes
I looked and there was a pale green horse! Its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed with him.
—Book of Revelations, c. 90The brain is an unreliable organ, it is monstrously great, monstrously developed. Swollen, like a goiter.
—Aleksandr Blok, c. 1920Democracy cannot be static. Whatever is static is dead.
—Eleanor Roosevelt, 1942One of the important requirements for learning how to cook is that you also learn how to eat.
—Julia Child, 2001Memory is necessary for all operations of reasoning.
—Blaise Pascal, c. 1658If my books had been any worse I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better I should not have come.
—Raymond Chandler, 1945We die of comfort and by conflict live.
—May Sarton, 1953The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.
—Agnes Repplier, 1929Whenever in history equality appeared on the agenda, it was exported somewhere else, like an undesirable.
—Mary McCarthy, 1971If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.
—Samuel Johnson, 1777Whenever there is excess, an ax remedies it.
—Sumerian proverbIt is impossible to live pleasurably without living wisely, well, and justly, and impossible to live wisely, well, and justly without living pleasurably.
—Epicurus, c. 300 BC