Whatsoever is, is in God.
—Benedict de Spinoza, 1677
Archive
Quotes
Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.
—William Empson, 1928Those who travel heedlessly from place to place, observing only their distance from each other and attending only to their accommodation at the inn at night, set out fools, and will certainly return so.
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 1747Whenever there is excess, an ax remedies it.
—Sumerian proverbIt is impossible to translate the poets. Can you translate music?
—Voltaire, c. 1732War has silenced all laws.
—Lucan, c. 65If there is a technological advance without a social advance, there is, almost automatically, an increase in human misery.
—Michael Harrington, 1962Any man could, if he were so inclined, be the sculptor of his own brain.
—Santiago Ramón y Cajal, 1897The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1870You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.
—Cormac McCarthy, 2005The righteous know the needs of their animals, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel.
—Book of Proverbs, c. 500 BCWe are a commercial people. We cannot boast of our arts, our crafts, our cultivation; our boast is in the wealth we produce.
—Ida M. Tarbell, 1904There is something stirring in the way civilization gapes like a savage at the achievements of nature.
—Karl Kraus, 1909