One man’s loss is another man’s profit.
—Michel de Montaigne, c. 1580
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Quotes
The children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is so.
—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1983Do you suppose that will change the sense of the morals, the fact that we can’t use morals as a means of judging the city because we couldn’t stand it? And that we’re changing our whole moral system to suit the fact that we’re living in a ridiculous way?
—Philip Johnson, 1965The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.
—Donald Barthelme, 1964The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletariat to the level of bourgeois stupidity.
—Gustave Flaubert, 1871Let my epitaph be, “Here lies Joseph, who failed in everything he undertook.”
—Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, 1790After midnight the moon set and I was alone with the stars. I have often said that the lure of flying is the lure of beauty, and I need no other flight to convince me that the reason flyers fly, whether they know it or not, is the aesthetic appeal of flying.
—Amelia Earhart, 1935It is very foolish to attack one’s enemy openly if one can injure him in secret.
—Giambattista Giraldi, 1543Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
—Ecclesiastes, c. 250 BCNever make a defense or apology before you be accused.
—Charles I, 1636Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion.
—John Berger, 1972Casting lots causes contentions to cease, and keeps the mighty apart.
—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BCThe sadness of the end of a career of an older athlete, with the betrayal of his body, is mirrored in the rest of us. Consciously or not, we know: there, soon, go I.
—Ira Berkow, 1987