Archive

Quotes

To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.

—Oscar Wilde, 1891

Everything that deceives does so by casting a spell.

—Plato, c. 375 BC

There is no greater disaster than not to know contentment.

—Laozi, c. 550 BC

Business is other people’s money.

—Delphine de Girardin, 1852

Better a thousand enemies outside the house than one inside.

—Arabic proverb

True friendship withstands time, distance, and silence.

—Isabel Allende, 2000

Drink today and drown all sorrow; / You shall perhaps not do it tomorrow.

—John Fletcher, 1625

Thou art not to learn the humors and tricks of that old bald cheater, time.

—Ben Jonson, 1601

If there was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is now engaged.

—Thomas Paine, 1778

Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth but not its twin.

—Barbara Kingsolver, 1990

Science is a cemetery of dead ideas.

—Miguel de Unamuno, 1913

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

—Jeremy Bentham, c. 1832

Perish the universe, provided I have my revenge.

—Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac, 1654