A good dog, sir, deserves a good bone.
—Ben Jonson, 1633
Archive
Quotes
The more laws, the more lawbreakers.
—Tao Te Ching, c. 500 BCI think that to get under the surface and really appreciate the beauty of any country, one has to go there poor.
—Grace Moore, 1944The most dangerous madmen are those created by religion, and people whose aim is to disrupt society always know how to make good use of them.
—Denis Diderot, 1777We must consider that we shall be a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world.
—John Winthrop, 1630Those from whom we were born have long since departed, and those with whom we grew up exist only in memory. We, too, through the approach of death, become, as it were, trees growing on the sandy bank of a river.
—Bhartrihari, c. 400You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.
—Cormac McCarthy, 2005Machines seem to sense that I am afraid of them. It makes them hostile.
—Sharyn McCrumb, 1990Machines do not run in order to enable men to live, but we resign ourselves to feeding men in order that they may serve the machines.
—Simone Weil, 1934In life our absent friend is far away: / But death may bring our friend exceeding near.
—Christina Rossetti, 1881Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.
—Herman Melville, 1851No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.
—Bertrand Russell, 1961I cannot but bless the memory of Julius Caesar, for the great esteem he expressed for fat men and his aversion to lean ones.
—David Hume, 1751