If the bird does like its cage, and does like its sugar, and will not leave it, why keep the door so very carefully shut?
—Olive Schreiner, 1883
Archive
Quotes
A jest breaks no bones.
—Samuel Johnson, 1781I have yet, I believe, some years in store, for I have a good state of health and a happy mind, and I take care of both by nourishing the first with temperance and the latter with abundance. This, I believe, you will allow to be the true philosophy of life.
—Thomas Paine, 1803Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
It is not right for a ruler who has the nation in his charge, a man with so much on his mind, to sleep all night.
—Homer, c. 750 BCStyle is the image of character.
—Edward Gibbon, c. 1789The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man’s body.
—Francis Bacon, 1605A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.
—Amiri Baraka, 1962Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.
—Charles Lamb, 1833Death keeps no calendar.
—George Herbert, 1640What 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, 1621Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.
—Rudy Giuliani, 1999In all the ancient states and empires, those who had the shipping, had the wealth.
—William Petty, 1690