Archive

Quotes

You are dust, and to dust you shall return.

—Book of Genesis, c. 800 BC

Civilization, a much-abused word, stands for a high matter quite apart from telephones and electric lights.

—Edith Hamilton, 1930

The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.

—Edward VIII, 1957

It’s the end of the world every day, for someone.

—Margaret Atwood, 2000

One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.

—Oscar Wilde, 1894

Alone, alone, all, all alone, / Alone on a wide, wide sea!

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798

Anyone who has passed through the regular gradations of a classical education, and is not made a fool by it, may consider himself as having had a very narrow escape.

—William Hazlitt, 1821

I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.

—Albert Camus, 1957

The period of a [Persian] boy’s education is between the ages of five and twenty, and he is taught three things only: to ride, to use the bow, and to speak the truth.

—Herodotus, c. 440 BC

A maid that laughs is half taken.

—John Ray, 1670

We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.

—D.H. Lawrence, 1928

When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong.

—Eugene V. Debs, 1918

You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.

—Cormac McCarthy, 2005