Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations—wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.
—Edmund Burke, 1795
Archive
Quotes
All art is a revolt against man’s fate.
—André Malraux, 1951There is no profit without another’s loss.
—Roman proverbThere are two things that will be believed of any man whatsoever, and one of them is that he has taken to drink.
—Booth Tarkington, 1914Comedy, like sodomy, is an unnatural act.
—Marty Feldman, 1969Laughter almost ever cometh of things most disproportioned to ourselves and nature. Laughter hath only a scornful tickling.
—Philip Sidney, 1582I count myself in nothing else so happy / As in a soul remembering my good friends.
—William Shakespeare, c. 1595No one makes a revolution by himself, and there are some revolutions which humanity accomplishes without quite knowing how, because it is everybody who takes them in hand.
—George Sand, 1851So long as one believes in God, one has the right to do the Good in order to be moral.
—Jean-Paul Sartre, c. 1950Religion is by no means a proper subject of conversation in mixed company.
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 1754The United States has virtually set up an empire on impounded and redistributed water.
—Charles P. Berkey, 1946The mind of man is capable of anything.
—Guy de Maupassant, 1884The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774