Archive

Quotes

No one wins a quarrel by quarreling.

—German proverb

God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the cat. He has no real style. He just goes on trying other things.

—Pablo Picasso, 1964

There is a sickness among tyrants: they cannot trust their friends.

—Aeschylus, c. 458 BC

A bad reputation is easy to come by, painful to bear, and difficult to clear.

—Hesiod, c. 700 BC

Despotism subjects a nation to one tyrant—­democracy to many.

—Marguerite Gardiner, 1839

I have often been convinced that a democracy is incapable of empire.

—Thucydides, c. 404 BC

The happiness of society is the end of government.

—John Adams, 1776

A garden must be looked into, and dressed as the body.

—George Herbert, 1640

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.

—Francis Bacon, 1625

The noblest kind of retribution is not to become like your enemy.

—Marcus Aurelius, c. 175

The children of the revolution are always ungrateful, and the revolution must be grateful that it is so.

—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1983

I look for the end of the future, but it never ceases to arrive. 

—Zhuangzi, c. 325 BC

The future comes like an unwelcome guest.

—Edmund Gosse, 1873