Archive

Quotes

Nature’s rules have no exceptions.

—Herbert Spencer, 1851

My ideas are clear. My orders are precise. Within five years, Rome must appear marvelous to all the people of the world—vast, orderly, powerful, as in the time of the empire of Augustus.

—Benito Mussolini, 1929

There’s hope a great man’s memory may outlive his life half a year.

—William Shakespeare, c. 1600

Keep no company with those whose position is high but whose morals are low.

—Ge Hong, c. 320

The future is no more uncertain than the present.

—Walt Whitman, 1856

The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.

—John Locke, 1695

Where it is a duty to worship the sun, it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.

—John Morley, 1872

Can you take your country with you on the soles of your shoes?

—Georg Büchner, 1835

In its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating.

—Michel Foucault, 1975

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.

—Genesis, c. 900 BC

The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy, and temperamental: it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chawing a hunk of melon in the dust.

—Elizabeth Bowen, 1955

Love lasteth as long as the money endureth.

—William Caxton, 1476

Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.

—Francis Bacon, 1625