Archive

Quotes

What hath night to do with sleep?

—John Milton, 1637

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

—Vegetius, c. 385

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

—Samuel Johnson, 1759

Petty laws breed great crimes.

—Ouida, 1880

The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which force of habit has made permanent.

—Marcel Proust, 1919

Friends are fictions founded on some single momentary experience.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1864

Cows are among the gentlest of breathing creatures; none show more passionate tenderness to their young when deprived of them—and, in short, I am not ashamed to profess a deep love for these quiet creatures.

—Thomas De Quincey, 1821

When the abbot throws the dice, the whole convent will play.

—Martin Luther, c. 1540

These useless men ought to be cut up and served at a banquet. I really believe that athletes have less intelligence than swine.

—Dio Chrysostom, c. 95

We are a commercial people. We cannot boast of our arts, our crafts, our cultivation; our boast is in the wealth we produce.

—Ida M. Tarbell, 1904

This is not a clash between civilizations. It is a clash about civilization.

—Tony Blair, 2006

Slang is as old as speech and the congregating together of people in cities. It is the result of crowding and excitement and artificial life.

—John Camden Hotten, 1859

Under the wide and starry sky, / Dig the grave and let me lie.

—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1887