Archive

Quotes

We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament and embrace it with passion if we want to be happy.

—Cyril Connolly, 1944

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.

—Frederick Douglass, 1855

Everyone else is represented in Washington by a rich and powerful lobby, it seems. But there is no lobby for the people.

—Shirley Chisholm, 1970

One of the animals which a generous and sociable man would soonest become is a dog. A dog can have a friend; he has affections and character; he can enjoy equally the field and the fireside; he dreams, he caresses, he propitiates; he offends and is pardoned; he stands by you in adversity; he is a good fellow.

—Leigh Hunt, 1834

Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.

—E.B. White, 1944

Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.

—Benjamin Franklin, c. 1732

There is a demon who puts wings on certain tales and launches them like eagles out into space.

—Alexandre Dumas, 1846

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

—E.B. White, 1944

Nature never breaks her own laws.

—Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1500

I order that my funeral ceremonies be extremely modest, and that they take place at dawn or at the evening Ave Maria, without song or music.

—Giuseppe Verdi, 1900

The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy, and temperamental: it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chawing a hunk of melon in the dust.

—Elizabeth Bowen, 1955

It is wretched business to be digging a well just as you’re dying of thirst.

—Plautus, c. 193 BC

The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.

—Charles Darwin, 1871