There was no treachery too base for the world to commit.
—Virginia Woolf, 1927
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Quotes
Shamelessness is the shame of being without shame.
—Mencius, c. 290 BCThe gratitude is greater than the gift.
—Pierre Corneille, 1641What a man does abroad by night requires and implies more deliberate energy than what he is encouraged to do in the sunshine.
—Henry David Thoreau, 1852Today’s city is the most vulnerable social structure ever conceived by man.
—Martin Oppenheimer, 1969It is noble to die before doing anything that deserves death.
—Anaxandrides, c. 376Man and animals are really the conduit of food, the sepulcher of animals, and resting place of the dead, one causing the death of the other, making themselves the covering for the corruption of other dead bodies.
—Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1500The man in constant fear is every day condemned.
—Publilius Syrus, c. 50 BCThe 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, 1955Better no law than no law enforced.
—Danish proverbThe world is dying of machinery; that is the great disease, that is the plague that will sweep away and destroy civilization; man will have to rise against it sooner or later.
—George Moore, 1888What keeps the democracy alive at all but the hatred of excellence, the desire of the base to see no head higher than their own?
—Mary Renault, 1956Once any group in society stands in a relatively deprived position in relation to other groups, it is genuinely deprived.
—Margaret Mead, 1972