Why is not a rat as good as a rabbit? Why should men eat shrimps and neglect cockroaches?
—Henry Ward Beecher, 1862
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Quotes
What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.
—Henry David Thoreau, 1850According to the law of custom, and perhaps of reason, foreign travel completes the education of an English gentleman.
—Edward Gibbon, c. 1794We possess art lest we perish of the truth.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1887People can say what they like about the eternal verities, love and truth and so on, but nothing’s as eternal as the dishes.
—Margaret Mahy, 1985The money market is to a commercial nation what the heart is to man.
—William Pitt, 1805Most vegetarians I ever saw looked enough like their food to be classed as cannibals.
—Finley Peter Dunne, 1900The 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, 1605The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of a gun.
—P.G. Wodehouse, 1929Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
—Gore Vidal, 1981To make laws that man cannot and will not obey serves to bring all law into contempt.
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1860The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.
—John Nance Garner, c. 1967Good fortune is light as a feather, but nobody knows how to hold it up. Misfortune is heavy as the earth, but nobody knows how to stay out of its way.
—Zhuangzi, c. 300 BC