Envy is the basis of democracy.
—Bertrand Russell, 1930
Archive
Quotes
Two things only the people anxiously desire, bread and the circus games.
—Juvenal, c. 121Shame on the soul, to falter on the road of life while the body still perseveres.
—Marcus Aurelius, c. 170To be too conscious is an illness—a real thoroughgoing illness.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1864He who commands the sea has command of everything.
—Francis Bacon, c. 1600A multitude of small delights constitute happiness.
—Charles Baudelaire, 1897Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape.
—Erich Fromm, 1947What a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books; we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.
—Robert Burton, 1621There is not so contemptible a plant or animal that does not confound the most enlarged understanding.
—John Locke, 1689God walks among the pots and pans.
—Saint Teresa of Ávila, c. 1582My face looks like a wedding cake left out in the rain.
—W.H. Auden, c. 1967The young man must store up, the old man must use.
—Seneca the Younger, c. 63The fox knows lots of tricks, the hedgehog only one—but it’s a winner.
—Archilochus, c. 650 BC