When poets don’t know what to say and have completely given up on the play, just like a finger, they lift the machine and the spectators are satisfied.
—Antiphanes, c. 350 BC
Archive
Quotes
A bull contents himself with one meadow, and one forest is enough for a thousand elephants; but the little body of a man devours more than all other living creatures.
—Seneca the Younger, c. 64A shopkeeper will never get the more custom by beating his customers; and what is true of a shopkeeper is true of a shopkeeping nation.
—Josiah Tucker, 1766It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.
—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1515An exile with no home anywhere is a corpse without a grave.
—Publilius Syrus, 50 BCIf men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait forever.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1843I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast, for I intend to go in harm’s way.
—John Paul Jones, 1778A fair complexion is unbecoming to a sailor: he ought to be swarthy from the waters of the sea and the rays of the sun.
—Ovid, c. 1 BCThe U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.
—Anthony Burgess, 1972Every memory everyone has ever had will eventually be underwater.
—Anthony Doerr, 2006Seafarers go to sleep in the evening not knowing whether they will find themselves at the bottom of the sea the next morning.
—Jean de Joinville, c. 1305Every city has a sex and an age which have nothing to do with demography. Rome is feminine. So is Odessa. London is a teenager, an urchin, and in this hasn’t changed since the time of Dickens. Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.
—John Berger, 1987I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.
—Thomas Hobbes, 1679