Archive

Quotes

A true German can’t stand the French, / Yet willingly he drinks their wines.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1832

I am a man: I consider nothing human alien to me.

—Terence, 163 BC

I think it makes small difference to the dead if they are buried in the tokens of luxury. All this is an empty glorification left for those who live.

—Euripides, 415 BC

Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a god.

—Jean Rostand, 1939

Toil is man’s allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that’s more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.

—Herman Melville, 1849

I think that to get under the surface and really appreciate the beauty of any country, one has to go there poor.

—Grace Moore, 1944

The fear of war is worse than war itself.

—Seneca, c. 50

Quarreling must lead to disorder, and disorder exhaustion.

—Xunzi, c. 250 BC

Today’s friend may be tomorrow’s foe.

—Sophocles, 440 BC

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die, and you to live. Which is better, only the god knows.

—Socrates, 399 BC

I will never again command an army in America if we must carry along paid spies. I will banish myself to some foreign country first.

—William Tecumseh Sherman, 1863

He who laugheth too much, hath the nature of a fool; he that laugheth not at all, hath the nature of an old cat.

—Thomas Fuller, 1732

Thought depends absolutely on the stomach, but in spite of that, those who have the best stomachs are not the best thinkers.

—Voltaire, 1770