My stern chase after time is, to borrow a simile from Tom Paine, like the race of a man with a wooden leg after a horse.
—John Quincy Adams, 1844
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Quotes
A merchant shall hardly keep himself from doing wrong.
—Ecclesiasticus, c. 180 BCThe ingrained idea that, because there is no king and they despise titles, the Americans are a free people is pathetically untrue.
—Margot Asquith, 1922Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
—William Jennings Bryan, 1899Our allotted time is the passing of a shadow.
—Book of Wisdom, c. 100 BCI am ill every time it blows hard, and nothing but my enthusiastic love for the profession keeps me one hour at sea.
—Admiral Horatio Nelson, 1804My interest is in the future, because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.
—Charles F. Kettering, 1946Hospitality consists in a little fire, a little food, and an immense quiet.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1856When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.
—St. Jerome, 395All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it.
—Henry David Thoreau, 1849And then, sir, there is this consideration: that if the abuse be enormous, nature will rise up and, claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system.
—Samuel Johnson, 1791The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.
—Agnes Repplier, 1929Journalists belong in the gutter, because that is where the ruling classes throw their guilty secrets.
—Gerald Priestland, 1988