Archive

Quotes

Some memories are like lucky charms, talismans, one shouldn’t tell about them or they’ll lose their power.

—Iris Murdoch, 1985

The United States has virtually set up an empire on impounded and redistributed water.

—Charles P. Berkey, 1946

The whole secret of fencing consists but in two things, to give and not to receive.

—Molière, 1670

The tune I remember, could I but keep the words.

—Virgil, 38 BC

The sole business of a seaman onshore who has to go to sea again is to take as much pleasure as he can.

—Leigh Hunt, 1820

I think heaven will not be as good as earth, unless it bring with it that sweet power to remember, which is the staple of heaven here.

—Emily Dickinson, 1879

At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.

—W. Somerset Maugham, 1896

Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.

—Ambrose Bierce, 1906

The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station.

—Hunter S. Thompson, 1971

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

—Bertrand Russell, 1961

Style is the image of character.

—Edward Gibbon, c. 1789

To cast aside obedience, and by popular violence to incite revolt, is treason, not against man only, but against God.

—Pope Leo XIII, 1885

Never greet a stranger in the night, for he may be a demon.

—Babylonian Talmud, c. 600