Archive

Quotes

People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them.

—James Baldwin, 1953

Fortune resists half-hearted prayers. 

—Ovid, 8

Labor disgraces no man; unfortunately, you occasionally find men who disgrace labor.

—Ulysses S. Grant, 1877

If I had the use of my body I would throw it out of the window.

—Samuel Beckett, 1951

If the heavens were all parchment, and the trees of the forest all pens, and every human being were a scribe, it would still be impossible to record all that I have learned from my teachers.

—Jochanan ben Zakkai, c. 75

The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes “sightseeing.”

—Daniel Boorstin, 1961

What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.

—Henry David Thoreau, 1850

If fame is only to come after death, I am in no hurry for it.

—Martial, c. 86

The various modes of religion which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true, by the philosophers equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful.

—Edward Gibbon, 1776

Oligopoly, plutocracy, kleptocracy: All things that are good for a shareholder. 

—James J. Cramer, 2006

In settling an island, the first building erected by a Spaniard will be a church, by a Frenchman a fort, by a Dutchman a warehouse, and by an Englishman an alehouse.

—Francis Grose, 1787

Egypt was the mother of magicians.

—Clement of Alexandria, c. 200

Animals are good to think with.

—Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1962