Archive

Quotes

Knowledge itself is power.

—Francis Bacon, 1597

It would be impossible to live for a year without disaster unless one practiced character-reading.

—Virginia Woolf, 1924

Shamelessness is the shame of being without shame.

—Mencius, c. 290 BC

Among famous traitors of history, one might mention the weather.

—Ilka Chase, 1969

It’s your business when your neighbor’s wall is in flames.

—Horace, 19 BC

How like to us is that filthy beast the ape.

—Cicero, 45 BC

The mansion of modern freedoms stands on an ever-expanding base of fossil-fuel use.

—Dipesh Chakrabarty, 2008

We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.

—Oscar Wilde, 1887

The purest joy is to live without disguise, unconstrained by the ties of a grave reputation.

—Al-Hariri, c. 1108

Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

—Ecclesiastes, c. 250 BC

Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.

—Kate Moss, 2009

If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare.

—George W. Bush, 2005

Worldly fame is but a breath of wind that blows now this way, now that, and changes names as it changes in direction.

—Dante Alighieri, c. 1315