Archive

Quotes

In times of pestilence, gaiety and joyousness are most profitable.

—Jacme d’Agramont, 1348

Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

—Alexander Hamilton, 1787

Be temperate in wine, in eating, girls, and sloth, or the Gout will seize you.

—Benjamin Franklin, 1734

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

To place oneself in the position of God is painful: being God is equivalent to being tortured. For being God means that one is in harmony with all that is, including the worst. The existence of the worst evils is unimaginable unless God willed them.

—Georges Bataille, 1957

People living deeply have no fear of death.

—Anaïs Nin, 1935

The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

—John Nance Garner, c. 1967

He laughs best who laughs last.

—French proverb

I was born at a very early age. Before I had time to regret it, I was four and a half years old.

—Groucho Marx, 1959

Does anybody really want to attend to cities other than to flee, fleece, privatize, butcher, or decimate them?

—Jane Holtz Kay, 1992

Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with the necessities.

—John Lothrop Motley, 1858

The mind is not, I know, a highway but a temple, and its doors should not be carelessly left open.

—Margaret Fuller, 1844

Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.

—Socrates, c. 430 BC