No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.
—Samuel Johnson, 1776
Archive
Quotes
Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1915There’s folks ’ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away the water.
—George Eliot, 1859Till taught by pain, / Men really know not what good water’s worth.
—Lord Byron, 1819I am dying with the help of too many physicians.
—Alexander the Great, c. 323 BCI think it makes small difference to the dead if they are buried in the tokens of luxury. All this is an empty glorification left for those who live.
—Euripides, 415 BCAvoid the talk of men. For talk is mischievous, light, and easily raised, but hard to bear and difficult to be rid of. Talk never wholly dies away when many people voice her: even talk is in some ways divine.
—Hesiod, c. 700 BCBeing thus arrived in good harbor, and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stale earth, their proper element.
—William Bradford, 1630If I had the use of my body I would throw it out of the window.
—Samuel Beckett, 1951All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.
—Al Smith, 1933Put national causes first and personal grudges last.
—Sima Qian, c. 91 BCHe who dies of epidemic disease is a martyr.
—Muhammad, c. 630Play, wherein persons of condition, especially ladies, waste so much of their time, is a plain instance to me that men cannot be perfectly idle; they must be doing something, for how else could they sit so many hours toiling at that which generally gives more vexation than delight to people whilst they are actually engaged in it?
—John Locke, 1693