Ridicule often checks what is absurd, and fully as often smothers that which is noble.
—Walter Scott, 1823
Archive
Quotes
A self-made man is one who believes in luck and sends his son to Oxford.
—Christina Stead, 1938No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.
—Bertrand Russell, 1961That obtained in youth may endure like characters engraved in stones.
—Ibn Gabirol, 1040From hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.
—Herman Melville, 1851I began revolution with eighty-two men. If I had to do it again, I do it with ten or fifteen and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action.
—Fidel Castro, 1959
I’ve a grand memory for forgetting.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886The screech and mechanical uproar of the big city turns the citified heads, fills citified ears—as the song of birds, wind in the trees, animal cries, or as the voices and songs of his loved ones once filled his heart. He is sidewalk happy.
—Frank Lloyd Wright, 1958Lord! I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
—Jonathan Swift, 1738I tell you, there is such a thing as creative hate!
—Willa Cather, 1915No nation was ever ruined by trade.
—Benjamin Franklin, 1774No one makes a revolution by himself, and there are some revolutions which humanity accomplishes without quite knowing how, because it is everybody who takes them in hand.
—George Sand, 1851If it were not for the intellectual snobs who pay in solid cash—the tribute which philistinism owes to culture, the arts would perish with their starving practitioners. Let us thank heaven for hypocrisy.
—Aldous Huxley, 1926