Archive

Quotes

The only function of a school is to make self-education easier.

—Isaac Asimov, 1974

It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.

—Frederick Douglass, 1852

It is one thing to slander, another to accuse.

—Marcus Tullius Cicero, 56 BC

Water its living strength first shows, / When obstacles its course oppose.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1815

Be temperate in wine, in eating, girls, and sloth, or the Gout will seize you.

—Benjamin Franklin, 1734

We and the dead ride quick at night. 

—Gottfried August Bürger, 1773

In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.

—Voltaire, 1764

We often give our enemies the means for our own destruction.

—Aesop, c. 600 BC

Shame on the soul, to falter on the road of life while the body still perseveres.

—Marcus Aurelius, c. 170

Courage and grace is a formidable mixture. The only place to see it is in the bullring.

—Marlene Dietrich, 1962

The life of spies is to know, not be known.

—George Herbert, c. 1621

It raineth every day, and the weather represents our tearful despair on a large scale.

—Mary Boykin Chesnut, 1865

Your body is the church where nature asks to be reverenced.

—Marquis de Sade, 1797