Archive

Quotes

Quarreling must lead to disorder, and disorder exhaustion.

—Xunzi, c. 250 BC

A crowded police court docket is the surest sign that trade is brisk and money plenty.

—Mark Twain, 1872

Friendship’s a noble name, ’tis love refined.

—Susanna Centlivre, 1703

Appearances often are deceiving.

—Aesop, c. 550 BC

Pushing someone toward liberty does not set her free; taking the chains off a prisoner does not give him freedom.

—Ken Bugul, 1982

Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of these two has the grander view?

—Victor Hugo, 1862

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.

—Joseph Conrad, 1899

I would delight in music, but the music is discordant.

—Xie Lingyun, c. 425

The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.

—Agnes Repplier, 1929

To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance.

—Jean Genet, 1949

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

—Oscar Wilde, 1891

I have loved the stars too truly to be fearful of the night.

—Sarah Williams, 1868

He who treats another human being as divine thereby assigns to himself the relative status of a child or an animal.

—E. R. Dodds, 1951